2FM Breakfast duo Roz Purcell and Aisling Bonner are gearing up for a wonderful start to the festive season, as they are set to perform the 2FM Breakfast Live with the RTE Concert Orchestra at the Helix this December. With the concert only a few days away, we caught up with the pair to chat about live show madness, their polar opposite plans for this merry month, and how far along they are in their wedding preparations.
Roz, Aisling and the 2FM Breakfast team are taking their morning show magic to the big stage on December 9th, as they team up with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra for a festive night out that listeners won’t forget.
“We have been having so many meetings trying to really plan every single link,” Roz tells us as we chat about the level of planning that goes into these shows.
She continues to say that “it’s not just an audio experience; we are putting on a show. The audience are our loyal listeners, and we wanted a way to give back to them with special prizes and guests to give them the ultimate Christmas night out”.
The show is set to star some amazing guest singers, including Gavin James and Chubby Cat who Roz says: “They will be performing songs that feature on the show along with some festive tunes, which will be accompanied by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, conducted by Gavin Maloney.”
The pair also shared some exclusive news about some of the other performances of the night.
“We do have a very special guest who we all love, singing Fairytale of New York is Garren Noone.
“He is a great friend of the show, and to hear him perform is just amazing, I almost don’t want to be in there for rehearsals, I just want to watch it all in the moment,” says Roz.
Besides planning the Christmas Concert of the year, the pair are also in the midst of planning their own Christmas celebrations, with two very distinctly different plans.
“I go away every Christmas, so I am heading to Mexico this year,” Roz says, as she swaps the bitterly cold days here for some winter sun. “We are going to do some hiking around Central America, but while we are there, we are going to see Bad Bunny perform before his Superbowl! We are both massive fans, so we are really excited about that”.
With that sounding like the trip of a lifetime, Aisling Bonner is keeping her Christmas a little more chill as she jokes “and I am going all the way to Kildare for Christmas, so just as exciting! I was away in America last year, so it will be nice to have a Christmas at home”.
While their Christmases may look very different, albeit both very wholesome in their own ways; they both agree that the real excitement is yet to come, as the new year brings with it a fresh season of wedding planning.
Both Roz and Aisling are 2026 brides and just so happen to be tying the knot within weeks of each other!
“I am ever so slightly ahead of Roz,” Aisling laughs. “I have got the venue, the photographer, the DJ and my dress, which was the most exciting part. But the finer details? Well, they have yet to be worked out and there is a lot of procrastination going on.”
Roz admits that she’s even further behind adding: “Ash is getting married in about seven months, and I am in about six and I have half the things organised that Ash does. But I think we both have the same attitude to getting married and it will be done when it’s done!”
Both are planning celebrations that feel true to them, and for Aisling, that is a Dublin City Wedding.
“It means the most to us. My fiancé Alex and I live in town, and he’s American so no other place in Ireland would make sense to us. Half the guests are American, so I think it will be an interesting dynamic with the Irish but I hope that there will be a bit of craic with that!”
Roz, meanwhile, is going small, simple and pared back: “Zach and I are having a very small wedding; we won’t be going for something big. I am having my civil registry in Dublin with just a dinner, we won’t be going for a big band or party afterwards.
“We wanted to do it in Ireland so that people wouldn’t feel like they had to fly to another country or take time off to spend the day with us. At the end of the day a wedding should be about celebrating your commitment to spending the rest of your lives together. We didn’t want to put pressure on others with financial stress.”
They also shared with us their honeymoon plans for after the wedding, and while for others it might be a time to relax by a pool all day and wind down, the two have jam-packed plans for the weeks after their celebrations.
“I’ve got a bit of a mad honeymoon plan,” Aisling says, and she plans to spend the first few days as newlyweds in the stunning Kinsale!
“With my fiancé being American, we will have a load of yanks over, and we didn’t want to be rushing off straight away, so we will spend some time down in Kinsale, before heading over to Kentucky for a friend’s wedding just eight days after ours. From there we will find somewhere interesting to go, maybe New Orleans, but we will have to see!”
And for Roz, she is still in planning mode but has a dream destination in mind. “We have always said that one trip we haven’t been on and would wait till our honeymoon to go on, is a trip to New Zealand for four or five weeks to hike across the country.”
With the Helix set to light up for their festive show and wedding bells ringing in the new year, the end of 2025 and the start of 2026 is shaping up to be just as bright as the 2FM’s favourite duo!