Fifty years celebrated at Martinstown House

My husband's parents had their fiftieth wedding anniversary in May, which is of course a huge landmark. My husband and I have been married for seventeen years now, which is quite a long time in the grand scheme of things, but seems to fade into insignificance when compared with fifty years!

My husband is one of three brothers, all of whom are married with children. It is rare that we all meet en masse, since one brother lives in England, one in Scotland and one in Ireland. However, we organised an entire family celebration to mark the fifty years. This took place in August (the first date that everyone was free) in Ireland (where the brother with the youngest child resides).

We stayed in a fabulous place called Martinstown House. This is a large country house located near the Curragh, an hour or so outside Dublin, and it really is stunning. It has a handful of rooms and is run, not like a hotel, but as a country residence at which you are an invited guest. The owner is your host, welcoming and treating you as a guest in his home.

The owner's wife and son are absolutely first class chefs and we were treated to fantastic breakfasts and dinners which were beautifully prepared using fresh, local ingredients.

The surroundings are lovely -- evening drinks by an open fire in the drawing room, period bedrooms boasting up-to-the-minute bathrooms, and lovely grounds in which to wander and explore.

We had a lovely weekend at Martinstown House -- a really fitting celebration of fifty years of marriage!

Same sex weddings and the greeting card industry

We recently attended a same sex wedding party--our first ever, in fact. A colleague of my husband's was marrying his partner and we were invited to stage three--the drinks and disco after the wedding breakfast after the ceremony.

I was charged with buying a card for the event and, surprisingly, this proved quite tricky. Despite the greeting card industry's typical keenness to get us purchasing cards for every conceivable occasion, when it comes to same sex weddings, it seems they haven't quite caught up. Oh, there are plenty of wedding cards out there, but they are almost all, quite clearly, targeted at traditional bride-and-groom scenarios. Lots of pictures of happy male and female couple, lots of high heeled shoes, lots of glitter and sparkle and pink...

In the end, after visiting several shops, I happened upon a turquoise-coloured card sporting the words 'Woo hoo, you've finally tied the knot!' A little bit of white glitter, but not too much. It had to do.

But, hey, greeting card companies, I think you've missed a trick here. You currently seem only to be catering for part of the wedding market. And my guess is that the part you're neglecting is set to grow and grow.