Wedding of the Week: Grooms celebrate wedding with 2,500 decorative daffodil blooms
Von Stephen And Curran Johannes Capilitan Haffner Mark Wasselnheim Pictures:
Daffodils are Johannes Haffner’s favourite flower, so his fiancé Stephen Curran ordered 2500 of the blooms to decorate their wedding venue.
The couple exchanged vows at Markree Castle in Sligo on March 9 on the eve of Johannes’ 55th birthday.
As children, both grooms’ families moved to West Cork.
That was in November 1979. “I was seven years old when we arrived from Belfast," says Stephen.
Johannes was nine and had moved from the Black Forest region in Germany with his family who had bought a property in Baltimore, Co Cork.
It's now a boutique guesthouse, Rolf’s Country House & Restaurant, which Johannes owns with his sister Friederike Haffner.
But strangely enough, Johannes and Stephen didn’t encounter one another until more recent times.
“Our paths crossed several times, not known to either of us, then 15 years ago, we met at dinner at a friend’s house,” says Stephen, a placement supervisor at University College Cork’s School of Education.
The rest is history: They got engaged in Germany, during Christmas 2022, and had a jeweller in St Blasien, a town in the Black Forest, create their rings.
“I wanted our big day to be perfect and with both of us from a catering background, I felt confident doing things ourselves, from ordering dresses to making the truffles for the 100 guests," says Stephen.
“When it came to the flowers, we have a great supplier here in West Cork Daffodil so I ordered 2500 daffodils and all the other flowers five days before the event and made all the arrangements, including the bouquets for the five grooms-maids and the displays in the chapel at Markree.
“Markree is everything you can dream of for a wedding from the setting to the food.”
Johannes decided the dress code would be a black-tie from the beginning. “We bought our suits from Tom Murphy’s in Cork,” adds Stephen.
They were keen to supply Irish and local where possible. “Fields of Skibbereen made our cake of cheese and all the gifts for the wedding party came from Cork shops,” says Stephen.
Johannes chose his friend John Hallihane to be his best man and Stephen’s pal Barry Foley was his best man.
“Barry’s partner Pete Hurley directed the humanist/Hindi ceremony with the help of our close friend and grooms-maid Gigi Misra,” adds Stephen.
“Johannes had his two nieces Anna-Sofie and Victoria Haffner as groomsmaid and I had my sister Lisa Curran as chief groomsmaid and close friend Christina Callaghan as groomsmaid.”
A pre-wedding gathering in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Sligo the night before, complete with a 70s/80s-themed disco, gave guests the chance to mingle.
Mark Capilitan (markcapilitan.com), their wedding photographer, captured the newlyweds “in a real form of happiness”, says Johannes.
Stephen adds: “We were the first same-sex wedding he had photographed after doing 580 weddings.”
They changed their names before the wedding to Johannes and Stephen Curran-Haffner von Wasselnheim.
“Johannes and I decided that we would take his old family name that was lost a couple of generations back to honour his grandfather,” says Stephen.
Johannes’ grandfather was the mayor of Laufenberg in Germany. "He was imprisoned by the Nazis for burning and hiding the records of the citizens of Laufenberg so the Nazis couldn't discover who was Jewish or Socialist."
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