PAULA BULFIN and Noel O’Connor were married in St Mary’s Church in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, by Fr Joe Egan. Paula, who is a PE teacher in the Presentation Secondary School in Clonmel, plays camogie with the Tipperary senior team and, despite the cold, her team-mates held their hurleys aloft to form a guard of honour outside the church.
Paula is the daughter of Margaret and Michael Bulfin, and has six sisters and one brother. Two of her sisters, Triona and Pamela, acted as bridesmaids, along with a childhood friend, Róisín Ash. Noel is the only child of Catherine O’Connor; his father Richard died in 2006. His cousins Paddy and Derek Hayes, along with his friend William O’Dwyer, were his groomsmen. William’s children Caitlín, aged eight, and Josh, aged six, shown in the photograph, did the honours as flower girl and page boy.
The pair both went to school in Cashel and first met on the school bus. Noel was friendly with Paula’s older sister Triona. They then went their separate ways, with Paula studying to be a PE teacher at University of Limerick and Noel pursuing an interest in furniture restoration. When they met again years later, Paula says they “really hit it off”. They have been together for almost eight years and decided to get married 18 months ago.
Paula relied on the website budgetwedding.ie for a number of money-saving ideas. “I haggled over everything and saved thousands,” she boasts. “We sourced our own wine, as my sister Triona works in the drinks industry, and I bargained the hotel down on corkage from €10 a bottle to just €5.”
“I used this site for everything, including make-up and hairdressing, and even found the materials to make my own invitations for a fraction of what it would have cost to order them.” Some of her pupils put on a display of Irish dancing at their reception in the Clonmel Park Hotel and a local band called The Paddys got everyone up on the dance floor.
The occasion was tinged with sadness as Paula’s grandfather, Philip Bulfin, died two weeks before the wedding. The couple had lived with him while their own house was being built. Guests and family friends raised a toast in his memory after the wedding by visiting his favourite pub in Laffan’s Bridge.
The couple later flew to Miami and spent two weeks cruising around the Caribbean. They are now back in the home they built in Ballinure, Co Tipperary.