the Lee seizing its lunch, and she takes it out and shows it to me. Now, I’m no Vera Wang, but to my eye it did look more streamlined – classier, I would say – and although I’m really stretching my wedding attire knowledge to the limit here, not so typically bridal.
In terms of the backstory, you might be forgiven for thinking that at 52 perhaps Betty is on her second marriage, or maybe she just never found the right partner, or perhaps she is a widow. But her reason for getting married in her fifties is more complex. We’re still whispering as Betty continues to speak passionately about the dress on her bed. So much so, wide hips or no wide hips, I’m really coming round to the idea of buying it myself, I tell her. We both laugh and then she hushes me. We have to call a halt to the whispering, I tell her. I mean, what’s the big deal – surely her partner knows all by now?
‘No, he doesn’t even know I have two dresses, right? He. Doesn’t. Even. Know. I. Have. Two. Dresses,’ she says, emphasising each word the second time round.
‘You’re 52,’ I say, ‘and he’s what age?’
‘He’s 58.’
‘You’ve been engaged how long?’
‘For 35 years.’
Three and a half decades of an engagement. Fair enough, we all like to test out a product before buying it, but this is taking it a bit far, surely? Betty laughs. All round the house are photos of her family which she shows me with pride. She’s open and friendly, and happy to go into the story of what must be one of the longest engagements in Ireland.
The story starts in 1982 when Betty and her partner first got engaged. She was 17 and her fiancé asked her father if they could get married. ‘My father chased him and said get out of it. You’re too old. She’s too young,’ Betty explains. ‘You see, my sister had got married the year before and so my father was after a big wedding, and he wasn’t going throwing more money at another one so that I would end up back home again, as he saw it. But I didn’t come home, did I? We just moved out then and got our own place and the story began from there.’
The 1980s were such a different time, when fathers still had that kind of control over their daughters and could refuse to bless a marriage. And now 35 years on Betty has two children with her fiancé. William is 32 and Scott is 22. She wants me to mention her lovely daughter-in-law, Audrey, and the fact that she also has three beautiful grandchildren.
From the age of 17 onwards, Betty had always had it in mind to get married, but life events got in the way. ‘The plan was we’ll do it this time, or we’ll do it that time, but something always came up. So, I think now it’s our time. Food is booked, music is booked and we’re going to have a lovely day.’ I can’t help wondering though, for a couple who have been together so long – for decades, in fact – what difference will it make getting married?
‘I’ll tell you now, he’s my best friend,’ she says, ‘and I’m quite sure I would be his best friend. He understands me and I understand him and we just adore the children and the grandchildren. It has been a lifelong dream of ours and we just want to fulfil it.’ If Betty doesn’t shift the dress, she says she will donate it to a charity. I meet her fiancé briefly as I’m leaving the house, and it’s endearing that he’s not afraid to show his affection for Betty in front of a stranger. She says she’ll tell him all later, as I scuttle towards the exit. Some weeks later I drop in and we laugh and chat about it.
A few months after that, Betty messaged me to say that on 10 February 2017, she and her partner walked to the GAA club opposite their home and had their wedding. All their family were there, including the grandkids, and the bride wore a simple yet classy evening dress. The kind of dress that is timeless. ‘It was,’ Betty says, ‘one of the greatest days of my life.’
Her first wedding dress, by the way, is still for sale.
Hand-wrought platinum wedding and engagement rings for sale. Brilliant cut diamonds in a channel setting. Matching set. €7,500. DoneDeal, August 2018
As a single mother with a busy work life, Paula had originally planned that her brother would sell her two platinum diamond rings and that she would give him a commission in return.
She liked the distance this gave her from the transaction, and couldn’t face the thought of walking into one of those ‘cash for gold’ outlets and handing over her jewellery to be examined and valued. She lives in a small community, and felt doing that would make something deeply personal and traumatic become too public.
Thinking back, one of the signs of deepening recession in 2008 was that ‘cash for gold’ counters began appearing in shopping centres with little by way of screens to protect the privacy of customers. I remember seeing four women queueing up in Merchants Quay in Cork to get their rings valued in late 2009, as the recession was taking hold. Having ruled out that option, Paula’s brother persuaded her to put the rings on DoneDeal.
Initially in the months after her marriage ended, Paula spoke to the shop where the rings were bought, and floated the idea of the shop buying them back. Both rings had been custom made but she had thought she could get them turned into something else, or that the jewellers could recycle them into a ring for another person. These were Celtic Tiger-era rings bought for a significant sum so the materials carried value.
‘I had a fair idea of what they cost,’ she tells me. ‘I didn’t know the exact figure, but it was substantial. They meant much more to me than monetary value. I am not really into jewellery but I suppose they were particularly significant in what they symbolised. Now though, they are the opposite of that. They are just metal and stone and I wouldn’t want to even pass them on to my daughter. I just think now they were given to me under false pretences. People always say, “Love is blind”, but now I know what that means.’
Paula is in her early forties and had been in a relationship with her ex-husband for much of her adult life. When we spoke, the break-up was still quite raw. Her voice fragmented with emotion several times during our conversation. The primary aim for her in selling the rings wasn’t really financial gain, but more an emotional one. ‘My husband had an addiction. He had more than one actually,’ Paula tells me. ‘I discovered there was a lot of unfaithfulness before and during the marriage. I realised this early on into the marriage when I found another phone. He didn’t admit to it 100 per cent, but there was enough evidence to go for counselling. He still didn’t admit to it or anything, he just said it was a bit of texting and fun,’ she explains.
Initially, Paula says her husband was very apologetic and reassured her that the phone messages meant nothing. He was proactive in terms of addressing the issues he had and he seemed genuine about doing whatever it took to keep the relationship going. ‘I thought, OK, we’ll go for counselling and it will be fine. Looking back, I was so stupid,’ she says.
Paula thinks her husband loved her for periods of the time they were together, but that commitment and monogamy weren’t a priority for him. ‘Maybe he didn’t want to continue the infidelity. I think actually, looking back, he probably had a sex addiction. That was just one more addiction to add to his list of them.’
Despite the issues she’d identified their relationship continued and Paula soon became pregnant with the couple’s first child. ‘He was so manipulative,’ she says. ‘I was busy and didn’t notice as much and I was easy-going, so I suppose I let things slide, but his drinking got worse, day by day. His addictions were much worse than the infidelity to deal with. Addiction is the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with.’
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