Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

[Sillysandy]

I am Irish living in Ireland. My DH is British, he is an immigrant who grew up in London but had lived for 20 years in Ireland when I met him.

I discovered mumsnet about 8 years ago when I took on a sort of stepmum role and was flabbergasted at some of the stories, attitudes and opinions.

I still found the site extremely helpful, often giving me clarity on situations which would cause me a lot of angst.

However when I talk to friends and family members living in the UK I realise that a lot is to do with cultural differences.

It's amazing given how close geographically we are.

Attitudes to money, marriage, divorce, wedding gifts, abortion, house purchases, communication with friends are so far from anything I've seen in my circles.

To give my pov; (these are all generalisations) we get married later, we stay married, we don't consider abortion unless it's very particular circumstances, we are indirect about money "I'll get this one, you can get the next one (but it is LAW you only accept if you are buying back)" and sending bank details for a small amount would be horrifyingly rude, you only attend a wedding with a card containing at least 100 euro pp, you usually get married in your mid thirties, your kids are mainly all with the one father, we hide behind humour until we know a person very well, we don't report benefit fraud, we laugh a lot more... That's just off the top of my head.

The other thing is that most Irish people know all about English Irish historical tensions but many English people are utterly oblivious.

YABU You're talking out of your ass
YANBU The differences are enormous

I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. In my line of work now I do a weekly call with my UK based team and I always notice subtle differences in attitude.

I know, I was wondering exactly that!

TBH it would be 100 each so 200 as a couple now for a wedding. You have to cover the cost of your place at the table. It goes back to when there really wasn't enough money in most families to have a big wedding but a big wedding was important. The reason big weddings and big funerals were so important was not just because families were so big so you could get to 200 to 300 no problem with 1st Cousins and partners, but also that for hundreds of years it was the only large freedom of assembly permitted under law along with church services. So weddings and funerals were important for political reasons too because people could gather and discuss current events.

The average age for brides in Ireland in 2024 was 35.9 and it was 37.7 for grooms according to cso, our national statistical body

Wow, that’s really late. Anyone know why that might be?

If you can't afford the wedding gift you don't go.

I don't love this tradition at all I must say. A friend got married a few years ago. It was about twenty years since we had a wedding in this friendship group. There was a WhatsApp group set up to decide if we would do a joint cash gift, separate gifts with a memories book or whatever. It was decided we would go for a joint voucher and then the next topic was how much. I suggested 200 per couple. One of the women responded "shouldn't we give more. 100 per guest was the absolute minimum we received at our wedding, some people gave much more and that was twenty years ago."

My immediate reaction was FU as I definitely would have been a 100 euro guest and what's more it would have been a stretch for me financially.

But still... You factor it into the costs before you RSVP.

At a guess; our weddings are very expensive (tens of thousands), many couples have kids first and sort the house purchase and live together for years before being married. We often will have lived with one or two other partners before meeting our spouse. A lot of people grew up here with parents who were not divorced but should have been - it makes you wary about marriage.

The amount does vary depending on your relationship to the bride and groom
and your circumstances. The €100 pp is a standard minimum today, but you’d probably give more to close friends or family if you could.

No idea, but it's an average so would include second marriages too . Still quite late I think

Um there isn't a great deal of options around abortions - its not really a choice

I think the stars are first marriages from what I read.

All the reasons cited above I guess plus the fact that we have a pretty high rate of people with a 3rd level education so I guess it makes sense that well educated people with more career choices etc would spend time building that up before settling down, particularly women. One of my friends got married at 27 and we all thought it was wild 😂 It's not of course, but that was the perception.

Additionally a lot of Irish people tend to spend some of their youth after university living abroad in Australia. Canada, Middle East, UK etc and then come home to settle down.

I'm Irish, living in England and would agree about regional differences. Southern English middle class culture feels very alien to me, whereas northern English people feel much more 'normal'.

Actually, the education point reminds me of another difference- there are very few private schools in Ireland and it's not really considered by most families.

I'm always astonished at how early people seen to get married in the US. Straight after college seems normal, would be seen as ridiculously young in Ireland

If I could single out one thing though, it's the English attitude to death. The English secular 'twenty minute slot down the crem' funeral is just grim.

Its a very Dublin thing.

I did a road trip through southern England last August. I found the villages really different to Irish villages. Lots of them had no shops or pubs that I could see, just houses, churches, etc. Or maybe one pub. Villages seem more full of things here in Ireland, but that's just an impossible I got at as I travelled around.

That’s so interesting. Before this thread, if I had been asked to guess whether the average age for marrying in Ireland was higher or lower than UK, I would have said lower due to high proportion of Catholics. The only people I know who got married quite young here (UK) are very catholic and so their families wouldn’t let them live together etc without being married. One couple were virgins when they got married for instance.

I say all this without having ever set foot in Ireland so it would have been a completely blind guess.

People often live together now and have children before marriage. That’s a big change even from when I was growing up (70s, 80s) when it was very much frowned upon.

OP, don't take anything on here as typical of British culture. I can barely relate to at least 50% of what gets said.

I don't recognise this at all - rounds is totally normal for brits.

The wedding thing though yes, Irish do give insane amounts at weddings.

The Irish relationship with Catholicism is complicated, many are in name only. Then you look at the amount of people who cohabit, the fact we voted for marriage equality and abortion etc... It's very complicated. I think people still have a perception of Ireland back in the day when we were a young and poor nation and don't realise how wealthy and well educated the country is and the choices and liberalisation that has brought, things have shifted dramatically from when I was a child 30 years ago.

I'm English but DH is a child of 2 Irish immigrants and we visit Ireland a lot. Family in NI and Ireland.
Yes to the wedding thing! And money and hospitality in general. In England if we offer a drink or a brew and the person says no, we accept it. Apparently I was very rude to not make guests a cup of tea even though they'd said no.
Totally yes to the history. All the Irish seem to thing we know about all of the past and it's on the news all the time. I was oblivious until I married in the family and I'm pretty well read.
History and religion is still very much a hot topic.
This may also just be down to the backgrounds of family and friends but all of their young people seem to be much more polite and well set up in their lives. They have homes and jobs and families much earlier and in generally act older and more mature. But this may be that family are more rural and jobs are physical. We have family in their 20's building their own homes and running farms etc. I was still a child at that age!

I agree, but it’s a reflection of the much less important role religion has, particularly in England.

I remember a good friend of mine from Belfast who came to work in England saying “Do you know what’s the best thing about this country? Nobody in England gives a fuck about bloody religion.”

Yes. I agree. At first I thought the prolonged ceronomies around death in Ireland were a bit strange. Especially people turning up who didn't know the deceased but knew their brother through work or played sports with their daughter. But now I think it's great. Why not spend time reflecting on someone's life and socialise with your community and why not go along to be with a friend or colleague even if you didn't know the deceased. If it is a tragic death then showing community support is important. Irish definitely do funerals and death better.