Karen Dempsey

You are known as the bald priestess.

When people are saying, I don't remember her name, they can say, yeah, she's the bald one and you find me.

I don't want her to become a capitalist transactional piece where you pay somebody money and they say some fancy words and off they go.

It would be really important to do it as Claire, who you were as a child, rather than Claire Byrne, the broadcaster.

I think immediately people go into how they would feel about that job.

So they either say something like, I'd love to do that.

That sounds brilliant.

I've always thought about doing it.

Or I could never do that.

I could never stand in front of people and speak publicly.

People are rarely kind of mediocre about it.

There's some kind of interest somewhere.

They have strong feelings about it.

Yeah, they do tend to, yeah.

To me, the ceremony sets the tone for the day.

And that's why I think it's so meaningful as well to kind of create that feeling of community and connection in the ceremony.

Because then people will carry that forward into the celebrations afterwards and onwards into the life of that couple.

So my first wedding ceremony was two people who I didn't know at the time.

I went on to become dear friends of mine, Renee and Audrey.

On the day of their wedding ceremony, I remember that morning, they messaged and said, oh, Karen, we don't have ribbons for such and such.