When country singer Martie Seidel, 33, married actor Gareth Maguire, 28, in an intimate ceremony in Kailua, Hawaii, there was no headset-sporting celebrity wedding planner to be seen.  "We did it all ourselves," says Seidel, who now goes by her husband's last name.  Fortunately, there were also no elaborate flower arrangements or massive guest list to worry about: Thirty friends and a tropical sunset were all the couple required.  "It was exactly how I wanted to do it," says the singer.

 

Why the minimalist, rush-rush marriage?  In part because Maguire is an Irish citizen, and the couple had grown impatient with the trips he had to make back to his homeland to extend his visa.  So on August 10, 2001, two months after their engagement, they married at the rented vacation home of fellow Chick Natalie Maines.  Says Seidel, "Whipping a wedding together in less than two weeks was really a challenge."

 

So was the courtship.  When they met in March 2000, at the wedding of Maines's sister Kim and Maguire's brother Shane, neither had ideas about starting a relationship.  "I wasn't looking for love," Seidel says, who was recently divorced.  As for Maguire, he had a girlfriend in England, where he was finishing a graduate degree in French education.  Nonetheless, when both found themselves single again, they began a long-distance relationship, dating for more than a year before Maguire took Seidel to a scenic waterfall in his hometown of Carnlough, Ireland, got down on one knee, and proposed.

 

Once Maines learned the couple had decided to wed, she made her rental home in Kailua available to them, and they quickly drew up a list of friends and family to invite to the island for an impromptu ceremony.  Everyone pitched in before the festivities: Seidel's friend Lori Sheehan ordered food for the reception, and Maines styled the bride's hair, while Seidel did her own makeup.  As the sun set, she appeared on the beach in an ethereal cotton-and-silk-gauze gown by designer Jyl Kutsche.  With a recording of "Ireland's Green Shore" by bluegrass artist Tim O'Brien playing in the background, the couple walked down the aisle toward Ka'au McKinney, a friend who performed the ceremony.  "As far as I was concerned, no one else was there," says Maguire.  "We were on an island by ourselves."

 

After the wedding guests dined on sushi catered by Sansei restaurant and dug into a wedding cake decorated with local flowers.  ("We called the day before, and luckily someone on Oahu was willing to make us a cake!" says Seidel.)  Eventually, everyone wound up in the hot tub or on the beach.  And in the meantime "Emily and Natalie snuck back into [the house], decorated our room with flower petals, and lit candles," says Seidel.

 

In March 2002 the Maguires held a second wedding at the Londonderry Arms hotel in Carnlough for 100 friends and relatives unable to attend the first ceremony.  With a couple of bands and multiple Maguires on hand, there was no shortage of Irish jigs.  A few paparazzi even showed up, but this party, like the Kailua wedding, was more about sharing their love than striking a pose.  "My dad always said to me, 'When you meet the right one, you'll know it as soon as you see her,'" says Maguire.  "And that's how I felt about Martie.  No hestitations at all - I just knew."