A COUPLE who got married in the West Cork Hotel and recently celebrated their 45th anniversary there noticed one thing hadn’t changed in the intervening years.
Michael and Margaret (née O’Neill) Duggan were delighted to see the stunning cake stand for their wedding cake, was the very same one used when they returned, over four decades later!
Michael from Bantry and Margaret from Dunmanway now live in Durrus.
They met when they worked in the tax office in Cork city and got married on February 16th 1980.
To mark the milestone of them both turning 70 in January, and also their upcoming wedding anniversary, their children organised a party for them, back where it all began, in the famous West Cork Hotel in Skibbereen.
Celebrating with Michael and Margret were their children Siobhan, Liz, Cathy and John and seven grandchildren Dylan, Faye, Caoimhe, Oisin, Sé, Hannah and Bobby.
‘It was actually Liz my sister who noticed that it was the same cake stand, and then we checked the wedding photo and later confirmed with the hotel manager Ann Marie McSweeney,’ said Cathy.
Ann Marie, who has worked in the hotel for 30 years, and has been manager for around 20 years, said that in fact the cake stand has been in the hotel for more than 45 years – at least half a century.
‘It was bought by the hotel’s former owners John and Elizabeth Murphy and it has never moved from the premises,’ she said.
‘It’s a round silver plate with four small legs and a glass top that doesn’t have so much as a scratch or crack after all this time. And I guard it with my life!’
