The first wedding the hospice had ever held

Hospices get talked about as if they were only for dying. Antoinette Coakley told journalists this week that Our Lady’s Hospice in Wicklow, out at Magheramore, let her family keep being themselves. Last year they held a wedding there. It was the first the centre had ever done.

She had met Damien Coakley in 2009, in a Tesco, where the joking and “slagging” started before the date did. He came back the same day and asked for her number. They arranged to meet in Bray on the afternoon of the Wimbledon men’s final. Roger Federer and Andy Roddick were still on court more than four hours later. Damien waited. She was hours late. He never let her forget it.

They were not married. Mia, their daughter, noticed that her father sometimes called Antoinette by her surname, Carney, and joined in. She still does. Antoinette would joke that she would never want to be a Coakley. People who did not know them found it odd. It was how they were.

Damien was diagnosed with cancer in 2021. He went through several treatments, including chemotherapy, and tried to keep life ordinary for Mia and for Leah, his daughter from an earlier relationship. Infections from the spring of 2024 onwards closed the options. By February 2025 they were told there was nothing more the hospital could do. They went to see the hospice.

He decided he could die there. He did not want to be a burden at home. Antoinette cried every day. The hospice, she said, was a different idea from the hospital. They were looked after as a family. They still had the fun.

He had already proposed, with Mia’s help, before they went in. Talk of a wedding had been put aside because he was so unwell. A social worker, Gráinne, heard the wish and did not leave it sitting. They bought rings. Someone found a suit and a dress. A celebrant came who knew about Federer. Gráinne stood as matron of honour and got a wedding message from Jamie Carragher, because the family are Liverpool-mad. The hospice set a room.

“I just wanted Damien to get through the day without pain and not having to be fussed around,” Antoinette said. Looking back at the photographs, she called it another gift the hospice had given them.

He lived several more weeks. Surrounded by the people who loved him, after they played Kodaline’s All I Want, he died on 15 June 2025. He was 51. Antoinette believes he hung on. He had a particular bond with the girls, and he was proud that he was a dad.

She is hosting a coffee morning at the Ballybrack Tesco where she works, for Ireland’s Biggest Coffee Morning for Hospice, the Together for Hospice campaign that raises money for 24 specialist services. The national date this year is 24 September, or another day that suits. Every euro raised locally stays with the local service. She said the staff put her family ahead of their own. If a cup of coffee is a way to talk, or to ask for help, that is reason enough.

A wedding is not on a hospice menu. Gráinne made this one because she listened. Irish adult hospice core costs have been on the state since 2024, which is a different settlement from the one English hospices are living through. Fundraising still pays for work that is not on a payroll line, including a room that can be turned into a wedding.