Our flower festival, held in St. Mary’s church from 12th – 15th September, was a spectacular showcase of flowers, creativity and teamwork. We were delighted with the response of so many people.
In our visitor book we had visitors from Dublin, Kilkenny, Carnew, Tinahely, Shillelagh, New Ross, Carlow, Carrick on Suir, Cork, Kildare, Bagenalstown, Monaghan, Athy, Kinnegad, Wicklow, Laois, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Ukraine, USA, and Australia and of course a huge volume from Enniscorthy, Wexford and surrounding areas.
The feedback was extremely positive and there are some lovely comments in the visitor book about the event. People spoke highly of the flower display, the value for money and the delicious refreshments they received in the Church Institute.
Parishioners from all five of our churches worked extremely hard to bring the flower festival together. It was a big effort, but parishioners worked welltogether to ensure that everything was done to a very high standard.
To give people an idea of what was involved in the build up to the flower festival, we had many meetings to arrange the following tasks;
• Sponsorship of arrangements.
• Advertising and PR for the event.
• Liaising with the flower club.
• Preparations and sponsorship of the festival programme.
• Catering for flower club members (Mon – Thurs).
• Catering for flower festival visitors (Thurs – Sun).
• Raffle prizes.
• Plant, cake and jam sale.
• Stewarding of St. Mary’s church and the Church Institute.
• Preparations on the grounds of St. Mary’s.
• Preparations for the opening and closing services.
As you can see, with all the jobs that were required, there is simply too many people to thank individually. Sincere thanks to everyone who helped in any way to support the festival. We are delighted that over €16,800 was raised towards parish funds and that €1125 was raised towards St. Vincent de Paul. This is a tremendous result and will be a huge help to our Union of Parishes as we continue our ministry in this part of Wexford. Sincere thanks to all of our sponsors of the arrangements, sponsors in our festival programme and sponsors of the raffle. We are very grateful to Enniscorthy ‘Reachability’ for their flexibility in allowing us to use the Church Institute over the festival dates.
A huge word of thanks must go to the Co. Wexford Garden and Flower Club who did an incredible amount of work in both preparations and design of the flower festival. We are sincerely grateful to Helen Battigan and Jill Swift who both undertook an enormous task of pulling the flower festival all together. The artistry of the arrangements were superb and really showcased the skill and creativity of the flower club members. There was a lovely atmosphere of friendship and camaraderie in the church as the members worked together to create the display.
Opening and Closing Services at the Flower Festival:
We were delighted that Bishop Adrian Wilkinson could join us for our opening service on Thursday 12thSeptember. Sponsors, invited guests, flower arrangers and parishioners all joined together in a thanksgiving service. Dean Leslie Forrest, Rev Leslie Crampton and Janet Crampton all assisted Canon Nicola to lead the service and Bishop Adrian was our guest preacher. After the service there were refreshments served in the Church Institute, kindly sponsored by the Enniscorthy Lions Club.
Our closing service on Sunday 15th September was an ecumenical harvest in conjunction with the IFA and we were delighted to be joined by Malcolm Pimm representing the Society of Friends, Brother Sean Murphy from the Franciscan order and Rev. Dermot Davis and Fr Tom Dalton from St. Aidan’s Cathedral. Fr Tom was our guest preacher and Mr Jer O’Mahony, representing the IFA, also spoke to the congregation.
Refreshments were served in the IFA centre after the service.c
