The delighted bride and groom should have danced through confetti before being waved off by an elated congregation as they were chauffeured away in a luxury car.
And then it should have been on to a hotel function room, where excited guests should have listened to amusing anecdotes from the best man on how the newlyweds met.
But things were very different for the brother and sister who wed last week. The brother and sister who knew that they were defying the law by joining together in matrimony.
Of course, their wedding day had to be kept as a somewhat low-key affair. There was no church, no function and no amusing tales of how the lovers’ paths crossed.
But so determined are they to spend the rest of their lives together that they sealed their union during an intimate civil marriage ceremony last week.
And in a further twist, the couple, who discovered they were siblings after they conceived their first child, are expecting another baby.
But the pressures of the secret they have shared for years is forcing them to emigrate as they fear that if they remain living in Ireland it will only be a matter of time before the authorities become aware of their identities and prosecute them for being involved in an incestuous relationship.
In an exclusive interview on Sunday, the brother and sister speak openly about their wedding day and their future plans for their young family.
It is illegal for siblings to wed, and to protect themselves they have adopted the names of ‘James’ and ‘Maura’.
For everybody present at last week’s ceremony it was a poignant occasion. At one stage during what was the briefest of ceremonies, James and Maura’s father became so overcome with emotion that he had to absent himself from the proceedings.
And afterwards, Maura admitted that it was not the wedding day she had dreamed about ever since she was a little girl playing dress-up.
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