The last drop of champagne (and anything else that was on the house) has been drunk, all of your guests had a marvelous time and in a few hours time you are off to your honeymoon.
You look down at your hand at there it is – your wedding band, it may or may not be a Celtic ring, but there it is and you have an Irish hubby to match. Your happily ever after starts right now.
But what will your happily ever after be like now that you have married an Irishman?
You will have more then just your mother-in-law to worry about – when you get married in most cases you try your best to please your new in-laws (well I said in most cases). But since the Irish are known for their big families, you may have got a bit more then you bargained for. There are the immediate in-laws, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins twice removed. And fact remains there is no pleasing everyone.
But look at it this way – if you have managed to navigate the wedding preparations and not insult anyone by not inviting them, you are off to a cracking start. It will take the diplomatic skill of a UN’s peacekeeper but it will pay off in the long run. And there is another benefit to abundance of new family members (see number 2).
Free vacation – lets face it what with the recession and the credit crunch, vacations are becoming a luxury. And this is where all of your new relatives can come in quite handy. Never been to Co. Clare? Never visited Galway? At least now you will have a place to stay. Plus your new spouse is bound to have a few more relatives scattered all over the globe – you know how the Irish love to migrate.
The craic is always exceptional – The French have joie de vive and the Irish have the craic. And frankly I would take craic over joie de vive any day. Expect perhaps on Sundays. One has got to rest from time to time.
As it roughly translates to having a good time and it is one of the premises they live by as a nation, you can rest assured you will be amused and tickled pink.
One additional holiday – sure there is Christmas and Easter that counts as mandatory, but with the Irish you can count on at least one more holiday – St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s is the day when even the river Liffey turns green and it is not beneath the lads of Dublin to pretend they are leprechauns in a bid to chat up the girls.
Sports, sports and then some more sports – now we know that men the world over are passionate about their sports. But while most men will get their fill of football, basketball and at a stretch baseball the Irish do have a good few more. There is the soccer (of course the national team and their Irish league team), then there is the Rugby, Hurling, Gaelic football, Gaelic handball, cricket, horse racing and lets not forget golf.