This article is from page 24 of the 2009-08-18 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 24 JPG
ANDREA Corr may be hosting the most expensive wedding of the year when she ties the knot with mil- lionaire boyfriend Brett Desmond in Doonbeg this weekend, but the award for the most unique wedding will be staying in north Clare.
North Clare couple Marianne Pot- terton and James Slevin celebrated their marriage last Friday with a pa- gan ceremony in Doolin, followed by a fancy dress reception in Ennisty- mon. The theme for the wedding was ‘kind people from history’, with each of the guests dressing up as a person like Gandhi or Mother Teresa.
“We do things a little bit different anyway so we decided to turn the whole thing into a very creative af- fair. The idea of the wedding was a bit of an art piece, to be honest with you,’ said Marianne.
“Art is very important to my part- ner and myself so we figured, why not bring it all together and have an extra special, crazy fun day? My dress is a kind of bridalwear but it is not conventional bridalwear.
“We had several different elements to the wedding itself. We got married at a registry office in the morning. After that, the ceremony took place in our garden. We had a man and a woman who performed a blessing for the wedding and James has written a lovely ceremony himself.
“We had a sword ceremony, a ring ceremony and a part where each
guest at the wedding brought up a stone to the front of the ceremony and said a few words about us.”
The entire wedding party also made their way into the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon where former Mayor of Clare, Madeleine Taylor- Quinn launched the ‘Merging 3’ exhibition, featuring a selection of Marianne’s paintings, along with works from Madeleine Irene Smyth and Mary Foudy O’Halloran.
“I decided to go back to painting about a year and a half ago or so and
it’s been very interesting so far. I end up using a lot of text in my work – words that I find interesting or that relate to the ideas that I have,’ she nee
‘We often see words in a very plain way. I like to make the words into the painting and make them more inter- esting in that way.”