Wanderlust World Wanderlust World At an Irish wedding, the father of the bride gives away his daughter. At an Irish funeral, the bride's father is given away.
This darkly humorous one-liner plays on the stereotype of heavy drinking at Irish wakes. The "giving away" at a wedding is a ceremonial handoff; at a funeral, it implies the father has drunk himself into a state requiring transport home—or, more morbidly, that he's the next to be buried. It's a joke, not a cultural fact.