The Arthurs combine Irish and Cape Cod traditions in a beautiful spring ceremony.

Colleen Curran, soon to be Colleen Arthur, sat in her wedding dress next to her grandmother in the backseat of her great-grandfather’s red 1936 Ford as her own father drove the car over the Bass River Bridge, slowly making its way over the water while a trolley carrying all of her bridesmaids trailed closely behind just in case the car couldn’t quite make it. 

She watched from the window as the river passed below her and she recalls how her reality suddenly hit her, “I’m actually getting married today.” 

She and her husband, Ciaran Arthur, met at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England after she had been living in the UK for a decade. Both are medievalists by training, with her field being the study of Latin and manuscripts, and his being medieval philosophy and theology. After meeting, the two stayed up until two in the morning talking, and by the end of the conversation, Ciaran knew he wanted to marry her. 

“She was wearing a unicorn crown, and I knew that her ability to not take herself so seriously just made me fall in love with her even more,” he says. “We reconnected over a Zoom call during lockdown, where Colleen confessed undying love. I responded with, ‘Are we actually going to go there, because I don’t do things by half-measures. I need to know what’s your long-term view.’”

Four years later, after many Zoom calls with her parents, he was on one knee proposing to her on West Dennis beach where she spent most of her childhood summers....