BARBARA CLANCY AND LUCA MASCOLO were married on April 4th in Brotenstown Church, in Co Westmeath by Fr Joseph Gallagher. Some 85 friends and family members joined the couple for celebrations in Middleton Park House, a Victorian country house in Co Westmeath. With guests from Italy and Germany and staff at Middleton Park House including Maria, the Austrian head chef and Jeremy, the French wedding co-ordinator, the wedding was an international affair. “It was like the G20 summit,” remarked the bride.
From Clonmore, near Mullingar, Barbara is the eldest of Ena and Gabriel Clancy’s four children. She has two brothers and one sister - her sister Martha was her bridesmaid. Her father, now retired, was a maths and Irish teacher in the local school.
Barbara attended St Joseph’s Secondary School in Rochfortbridge and went on to study law and European studies at the University of Limerick, during which she spent six months in Freiburg on the Erasmus scheme. On receipt of a scholarship, she studied for an MA in European Law in Wurzburg in Germany and later went on to qualify as a solicitor with the Law Society of Ireland, Blackhall Place. She then worked for the investment company, Pioneer Investments, where she first met Luca in 2001. Barbara now works as in-house legal counsel for a sporting federation based in Dublin.
Luca is from Castellammare di Stabia, on the Amalfi coast in Italy. The youngest of Annamaria and Giovanni Mascolo’s two children, he has one brother, Andrea, who was his best man at the wedding. His father, now retired, was a doctor and his mother taught English. Luca studied economics at the Universita’ degli Studi di Perugia, after which he worked for a bank in Milan. When an opportunity arose to work for Pioneer Investments in Dublin, Luca was delighted to take it, having travelled around Ireland on a cycling tour some years previously. He now works as a risk analyst for the company in Dublin.
The couple started dating soon after they first met and decided to get married just before Christmas 2008. They were keen to celebrate their cultural and travelling experiences at the wedding and to that end, included prayers in Italian and German in the Mass. A Scottish friend, who is a member of the Gaudette Singers in Dublin, sang for them, and Barbara’s German pen-friend, Dominique, whom she first started writing to at the age of 12, played the flute. The bride also joined in the entertainment by playing traditional Irish music on the accordion, accompanied by her brother on the fiddle.
The bride and groom plan to spend a four-week honeymoon in Canada this September. They have already booked a cruise to Alaska and plan to rent a campervan and go hiking in the Rocky Mountains. “We will be bringing our hiking boots,” said the bride.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Emma Nee Haslam and Joe Kearns,
Birr Photography Group