Gorgeous bride wears a Helen Manuell wedding dress for her vibrant wedding

To say this wedding makes my mind-blowing would be the understatement of the century. It’s DIY done oh-so-right and oh-so-stylishly. I totally want to be friends with this bride. She is sassy in the best possible way and undeniably stylish. This sweet couple bravely broke tradition and changed their last names- taking on Adam’s last name Shirley, but adding Spencer before that in honour of his late grandfather. The couple actually met on an airplane on the way to Thailand as she was on a girl’s trip and he on a boy’s. Together, they travelled the entire three weeks together and went on to stay friends for many years. What started off as friendship led to the most beautiful love story and wedding years on. Each detail from a stunning Helen Manuell wedding dress to their vibrant DIY wedding captured by Darin Collison is just plain awesome! Click here to see it all!

From the bride

We actually did something a little bit untraditional and both changed our names. Adam’s name was Adam Shirley, and when we got married we also took on his late grandfather’s last name, Spencer, in order to keep his memory alive, as he was the last remaining Spencer and him and his grandfather had a really close bond.

How many guests?
170

How did you and your partner meet?
We met on an airplane on the way to Thailand. I was on a girl’s trip and he was on a boy’s trip. We ended up staying at the same hotel on the first night and then travelled the entire 3 weeks with their group and became great friends for many years. We were friends first and only started seeing each other many years afterwards. I thought he was pretty annoying when we first met and we didn’t really ‘click’ at first.

How did he propose?
He proposed in Noosa at our favourite restaurant, he had hidden the ring in his pants for a huge walk beforehand so that I wouldn’t suspect anything in his pocket.

What’s your most important piece of advice for creating and maintaining a strong relationship?
Keep laughing, don’t let things get too serious. Communication is so important, and listening to the other person and respecting their point of view, even when you don’t agree, is also pretty pivotal.

Tell us about your wedding gown and how you chose it:
I wanted it to be quite fitted, but also have a really long train with embellishments without being too traditional. My brief was ‘no lace’ so instead we used a range of appliques and different mesh materials to get a more modern take on a traditional dress style.

What sort of style did you envision for your wedding day (in terms of venue & décor + styling)?
Lots of colour, lots of fun, lots of greenery. No white and green styling in sight. Everything had to be really vibrant and colourful.

What was your favorite moment from the day?
Our first dance, definitely! We love to have fun and we are always the last ones on the dancefloor together so that was a moment that truly represented us. We danced to Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars and the energy was just so electric and upbeat – our guests literally jumped into the dancefloor halfway through to join us.

Any DIY décor elements?
A lot of the styling was DIY, we were very hands on! From the beginning, I came up with all the concepts and then my mum and I brought them all to life over the next few months. My mum was amazing, she is really talented and so she handwrote all the place cards and table numbers, she hand-painted 80 sets of oyster shells as makeshift salt-and-pepper shakers and trawled the internet for weeks just to find the right vases for our table settings.

We also got a bit DIY with the menu and asked the venue to create one canape that was my favourite food (fish tacos) and another that was Adam’s (hot chippies). We then made little toothpicks that either said ‘from the bride’ or ‘from the groom’ on them. Also my Aunty, Uncle and cousin were incredible. My uncle runs a family nursery so he arranged the shipment of about 16 Oak Trees into the venue. The ceilings were really high and the room was massive so we knew we needed a bit of height in there. We wrapped them all with fairy lights and the end result was just incredible. Also, because I had created most of the styling myself, I couldn’t be there on the day to set up so my talented cousin managed the entire bump in and bump out including styling a huge 2.4m tall flower wall which formed a backdrop for our DIY photo booth.

If you could do it all over again, what would you change?
I just asked Adam this question and his response was “can I change my wife?”. We really wouldn’t change anything, it was great

Any tips that you can give to future brides?
Don’t get too caught up in the styling of it all. People can go way, way overboard with it all but at the end of the day if you can nail all the big ticket items like the ceremony, the speeches, food and the music, no-one is going to remember what colour the tablecloths were, or whether there was Aesop soap and heaps of candles in the bathrooms or not. It’s really easy to get so caught up in the detail, but on the day, none of it even matters

Photographer: Darin Collison  | Dress: Helen Manuell | Makeup: Tre Dallas | Hair: Sarah Caporale | Accessories: Ichu Jewellery  | Bridesmaids Dresses: Finders Keepers | Grooms Suit: P Johnson Tailors | Personalised Wedding Gift: Adorn Invitations | Plants: Warner’s Nurseries | Wedding Invitations: BWedding Invitations | Creative concepts and styling: Papermill Media | Styling: Party Plants | Cake: Cherry Tree Bakehouse | Food: Bursaria | Flowers: Botanics of Melbourne | Ceremony Venue: Abbotsford Convent | Reception Venue: Abbotsford Convent Rosina Room