Yasmine Rodriguez and Colin Murray

VOWS: YASMINE RODRIGUEZ AND Colin Murray were married on May 30th by Father Udoji at Arcipretura di San Donato Church in Terricciola, a small hilltop village in north-west Tuscany. The bride was attended by Maura Byrne of Shropshire, England and the music during the service was provided by a local gospel choir and the groom’s mother, Marcella Murray, who sang the Irish hymn Mo ghrá Thú, a Thiarna .

Yasmine comes from Curitiba in the south of Brazil and is the only child of Cida and Jose Rodriguez. A huge fan of U2, she moved to Ireland in 1996 to study Social Science in UCD, and currently works as director of operations in Ovation, a global destination management company in Dún Laoghaire, where she has been for the past eight years.

Colin is one of five children and comes from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim. He moved to Dublin in 1997 to study computer science at DIT, where he now works as a systems administrator. Colin is also a familiar face on the Dublin pub scene where he plays music most weeks, and it was at one of these gigs that the couple first met, in July 2003. That night Colin was playing with his friend Mel in their acoustic band Mel Colly, and Yasmine’s friend Elizabeth had dragged her along to see them. Before long the pair were inseparable. Since then Colin has learned to speak Portuguese and they travel to Brazil each winter to spend time with Yasmine’s family.

It was in Brazil that the couple became engaged and they planned their marriage in Italy, with their reception at the hilltop Pieve de Pitti Estate and Winery. “Our Nigerian priest Fr Udoji was really good fun and put us all at ease,” said Yasmine, “and after the nuptial mass we were serenaded outside the church by a traditional gypsy band, led by Pino Masi, an Italian poet and songwriter.”

After the ceremony, 130 guests, including 10 from Brazil, had a lavish Italian buffet, followed by speeches by the groom, his father Sean Murray and his brother and best man Diármaid. Guests were then each given carnival masks, as a samba band arrived through the gates. It was unclear what the local villagers thought about this, the colourful sounds of Afro-Brazilian drums drifting across the countryside not normally heard in this part of the world.

The following evening the couple hosted a party in the Etruscan town of Volterra, home to a powerful coven of vampires, at least according to Stephenie Meyer’s famous Twilight novels. They left the next day to honeymoon in South Africa and Mauritius.