We got married on May 24, in Castle Durrow in Laois. We had the whole wedding there, including the ceremony. We had a non-religious ceremony on the lawn.
I had been to Castle Durrow before, when I was Rose of Tralee for a selection night, and I mentioned it to Ger. When we visited there together he was so excited by it, and because we wanted an outdoor wedding, the gardens were a huge draw.
We had 147 guests on the day. For me, finalising the guest list was the most difficult part of the planning. You’re always going to have to leave people out and I found that hard, but we were on a budget and wanted to try and keep the list manageable.
We planned the wedding ourselves, and I was determined to keep everything local or even within my friend group. I didn’t book any vendors that I hadn’t worked with before or didn’t know personally.
Kirsten Maher and Ger Butler
When it came to getting a dress, I had in my head what I wanted, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. I know Lynn from My Dress. I’ve modelled for her for years, and she was my first port of call. She showed me a look book that she had from suppliers. I opened the book and was like, ‘That’ll do me the finest now’. Then, I told her I was going to chop it. And the blood drained from her face!
But I had this vision, and it came to life. It was brought to life by a lady called Lisa O’Keeffe, from Kilkenny. She took on the job of chopping all the skirt off, and it wasn’t a simple job. Then, because of the new, shorter length, I wanted a crazy shoe. I’ve never owned a pair of designer shoes before, so this was the perfect opportunity. I found these blue Jimmy Choo shoes with a pearl detail that looked amazing with the dress.
Before the ceremony, we did a ‘first look’, because while we were relaxed on the morning, we were terrified of not being relaxed. We had 10 to 15 minutes of just us together in the room, chilling, having a drink and just watching all our guests arriving. That time was really good and meant any anxiety just melted away.
Our celebrant on the day was my best friend, Sinead. She helped us to curate our own ceremony. A lot of my family are quite religious, so we included a hymn and we had a remembrance prayer to remember those who aren’t with us anymore. We also did a ring warming, where you pass the rings around to the guests and they can ‘bless’ your rings with good intentions, and we also did the knot tying from the Catholic handfasting tradition.
Kirsten Maher and Ger Butler’s wedding ceremony
We had two short ‘readings’, which were essentially poems; we had a family member from each side read a poem and it was so heartfelt. We wanted the ceremony part of the wedding capped at 30 to 35 minutes, so we kept it all nice and simple.
Because we were having the ceremony outside, the weather was a huge consideration. We would have had to let the hotel know three days before the day if we were going to move the ceremony inside, because they’d have to get the room set up. So I resorted to messaging the Carlow Weatherman!
I asked him how bad it would be at that time of the day. And he said, ‘It doesn’t look too bad during that time’. So I thought, ‘You know what, that’s enough for me’. Now, it was raining that morning; the ushers and the groomsmen were down wiping off the seats. And I was sitting inside, getting my makeup done, saying, ‘It’ll be grand, the Carlow Weatherman said it’ll be fine’.
And it was. Towards the end of the ceremony it did start to drizzle, so Sinead, our celebrant, wrapped it up quickly, and we did the signing of the registry inside. So we got a bit of quiet time to go off and sign our forms with our best man and maid of honour and the photographer, and it was lovely to get that little bit of unexpected time.
Kirsten and Ger with Winnie the dog
We have a dog called Winnie, who is the centre of our world, and we wanted her to be part of our day. We hired a doggy wedding chaperone for the day, called Fiona, who looked after Winnie and brought her to the venue. Winnie even ran down the aisle to us during the ceremony, and she featured in photos with us, too. It was great having her there, but also knowing she was being looked after, so there was no stress on us.
Our first dance was to Unchained Melody, by The Righteous Brothers, and then, in what must be the weirdest request ever for a wedding band, I’d asked them to go straight in to Maniac 2000. They totally made it work!
Kirsten Maher and Ger Butler with their champagne tower
We did a few things differently to the traditional wedding, like we had a giant champagne tower instead of a wedding cake, and we did the speeches during the drinks reception, which made it a little more casual and then everyone could relax in to the evening, knowing the formalities were all over.
I went to bed about 3.30am, but apparently there were people still going well in to the early morning. Everyone had a great time.
- Kirsten made ‘Rose of Tralee’ history when she became the first African-Irish contestant to win in 2018. She presents ‘The Takeover with Kirsten’ on Beat 102 103 every weekday from 8pm to 10.45pm
