Inside the hall:On a chilly Sunday morning, in an old Royal Dublin Society warehouse in the heart of Dublin 4, Sinn Féin crossed its last great hurdle, writes Kathy Sheridan
At 10am, all the pieces were in place for what Martin McGuinness called "D-Day. . . our Decision Day": a hall packed with more than 2,000 delegates, members of the diplomatic corps and at least 100 journalists, a platform party that included such republican icons as Martina Anderson, Derry beauty queen turned Brighton bomber, and Evelyn Glenholmes, an OTR (on-the-run), wanted on explosive charges.
And it was all unfolding - albeit unplanned - on the 35th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, one of the most emotive commemorations in the republican canon.
The banners spoke the old language, "A century of struggle", while the platform backdrop boasted a fresh, new colour scheme, a swathe of calming blue, with a splash of white, orange, an odd shade of pinky-purple (a hue also picked up in the delegate voting badges) and dash of green.
It was a day distinctly low in passion. When a pale, gaunt Gerry Adams declared that "volunteerism is alive in Sinn Féin", he was not talking about the Fenian dead but about the people who transformed an RDS warehouse into a place fit for an extraordinary ardfheis.
Anyone who came to the RDS yesterday expecting ardour, would have been better off lining up with a few republicans to have their picture taken with protester, Willie Frazer (of Love Ulster fame), or better still, sidling into the Bride of the Year show next door.
Because for Sinn Féin, this was more about the long, hard trudge of a good-enough marriage, where the passion has dimmed, everyone is all talked out and peace of a kind reigns.
Parity of esteem, a stoutly rational head over dreamy old heart, a united front against the world come what may. . . they may not be the stuff of romance, but they stand for life and survival.
On the way in, Martin McGuinness was stopped by an acquaintance, who assured him it was all "no bother".
"No bother?" yelped a startled McGuinness.
"No bother? It was a lot of bother. When you have people you've known for 30 years not speaking to you, families of dead volunteers . . . that's not easy."
But the message, repeated over and over, was unity.
It had all the signs of a rubber stamping exercise.
The leadership had done its homework. There would be no split.
Seán Oliver, who spoke for the Greencastle Martyrs Cumann, from near where serial killer Mark Haddock operated in Mount Vernon, said there would be other battles, "but I'd say this is the biggest one . . ." He does not want his two boys, aged 17 and 12, "to go through, what we went through". He mentioned "the irony" of watching the TV with his boys, all "automatically supporting the police dealing with the criminals", but then having to explain why he didn't support their own police force ".
Despite the many declarations of "Tiochfaidh ar lá", "Beir bua", and the defiant rhetoric of warriors and martyrs - "I'm here in support of the revolu - I mean the resolution", said Rose Dugdale, to a shout of laughter - there was a terrible pathos in the scale of the loss of young lives (16 young men within one five-mile square area of Co Tyrone), the stories of a generation alienated by the RUC, the trail of grieving relatives, rising one after another to support the resolution, people worn down by loss and the futility of war.
When the dissenting speakers from Ógra were all lined up, the guillotine came down. Frank O'Neill from the Munster region called for a vote, "as people had long distances to travel home". He got the biggest cheer of the day.
The vote was called and, suddenly, it was all over. One woman sobbed as the delegates rose slowly to a standing ovation for those on the platform, while those on the platform applauded the floor. As the media and well-wishers swarmed onto the platform, on either side of Gerry Adams, a new generation - Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty - smiled broadly.
Oliver beamed : "Aye. It was the right thing to do."
One small matter remains: were those delegate voting badges pink?
"Ah no," protested Ed Connolly, a Munster delegate, "that colour is cranberry."
So they might have been the "pinkies", the ones who have brought Sinn Féin into a bold new political world.
Instead, they will be known henceforth as the Cranberries.