Cape of Good Hope for Derry bride Elaine McDaid as Translink saves honeymoon by delivering meds in time for flight to South Africa

The newly-wedded couple jetted off to Cape Town on New Year’s Eve after getting married in Derry at the weekend.

The final few hours of 2019 were nail biting for the new Mr. and Mrs. Genockey, however, as the up-and-coming soprano forgot to pack essential medication for the trip.

“I’m an opera singer and I have asthma. The two don’t go well together. My asthma’s quite severe but I also can’t take steroids so my medication is really unusual. It’s not the standard over the counter blue inhaler,” she explained.

Elaine discovered she had forgotten the meds after arriving in Dublin late on Monday.

“It was a total panic. We had a hectic weekend. I actually lost my voice from it, a lot of guests, a lot of partying and then I just totally forgot to pack the essential bits in the bag so we were running around like headless chickens. I realised when I went to take out the tablets that I only had enough to do me for a couple of days,” she said.

Considering there was no time to drive to Derry and back before taking off for a dream honeymoon at the Cape of Good Hope Elaine decided to tweet her predicament.

“Anyone driving from Derry to Dublin Airport today?” she asked. “I’m going on honeymoon for 3 weeks and forgot to pack essential medication? Can meet at airport any time up to 3pm.”

Remarkably, the message was retweeted over 500 times and Translink got in touch to say one of their drivers would drop it down if her parents could get to the depot.

Elaine’s mother and father missed the bus but caught up with the X4 service at the next stop on the way to Dublin. The driver accepted the parcel and refused to take any payment.

“Fair play to Translink. They were great. I’m really grateful to them. I’m really lucky. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get what I needed but thankfully they sorted me out,” said Elaine.

It was a happy ending to a very happy weekend for the McDaid and Genockey clans.

“We got married in the main hall in the Guildhall. It was class because a lot of our friends are musicians so we had the organ and at the end the organist spontaneously burst into Fairytale of New York and the whole congregation was up singing. It was really, really magic,” said Elaine.

The opera singer, who met Tallaght-native Darragh ten years ago at Trinity College, said that football was another big discussion point at the reception in the Strand Hotel!

“He had a huge big group up for the wedding. The families had a good chance to get to know each other. My family is a big Derry City supporting family and his is a big Shamrock Rovers family and they all go to the matches so there was plenty of banter.”