Olivia and Stephen Fanning were married today at Dublin City Hall — the domed Georgian building on Cork Hill, at the gates of Dublin Castle. It is about as central as a wedding gets in this city, and on the day it came with the full Dublin treatment: grey skies, a shower or two, umbrellas up along Parliament Street, and not a bother on anybody.
A horse, not a carriage
Most of our wedding work is the carriage — the white coach or the open landau, ribboned up, with a driver in livery. Olivia asked for something different. She wanted to arrive on horseback, in the dress, in the middle of the city, and to be photographed that way on the steps of City Hall.
That is a bigger ask than it sounds. A horse standing quietly under a bride in a full gown, on a wet city street, with buses going by, a crowd gathering, cameras up and umbrellas opening and closing around him — that is not a job for most horses. There is only one we would have put up for it.
Romeo
Romeo is one of our absolute favourites, and he is genuinely one of a kind. He has the look — a black Friesian, all mane and feather — but it is the head on him that makes him what he is. Nothing moves him. He will stand where he is put, for as long as he is asked, and take a day like this entirely in his stride.
That temperament is why he has spent as much time in front of cameras as he has on the street. If you have watched much period drama filmed in Ireland over the last few years, there is a fair chance you have seen Romeo without knowing it.
How the day ran
He was in the city early, walked over the ground he would be standing on and given time with the traffic and the noise before anybody in a wedding dress came near him. That is the same preparation we do on a film set, and it is the reason the photographs look calm. By the time Olivia was up, none of it was new to him.
A handler stayed at his head for the whole of it. The rain came and went, the umbrellas went up, the crowd on Dame Street stopped to look, and Romeo stood there like he had been doing it all his life — which, in fairness, he has.
Thinking about something similar?
Congratulations to Olivia and Stephen from all of us. If you are planning a wedding and you want something other than the carriage — a horse to arrive on, or to be photographed with — talk to us about it. It depends entirely on the horse, and we will tell you honestly whether we have one who is right for what you have in mind.
Written by David Mulreany of Mulreanys Carriages, a licensed Dublin carriage driver of more than twenty years.
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