Harley Weir Wore a Corseted Dilara Findikoglu Dress for Her Ireland Wedding to John Kelleher
Dilara Findikoglu made Harley Weir’s wedding dress the night before the bride flew to Ireland to marry John Kelleher in Lismore Castle. Crafted using look 26 from the Turkish designer’s fall 2023 collection as the template, Weir trawled Etsy for “bits and bobs” to soup up the already exquisite corsetry that Findikoglu had deemed not quite ornate enough for her photographer friend’s wedding. “Let’s take it to the next level,” said Findikoglu, who kept in cahoots with the vintage-loving bride as Weir truffled out 100-year-old fabrics, while the designer herself was in the throes of finishing her spring 2026 collection.
Vogue readers will know that Weir modeled in Findikoglu’s fall 2025 show, in which models were invited to play moody but ethereal medieval rockstars, and had the audience spellbound. It was heaven for Weir, who says she would live in period dress if she could. “I felt like a princess, I must say,” she reflects of wearing her wedding dress, a couture-adjacent gown festooned with bows and decorated with a pre-Raphaelite-meets-Princess Leia veil, again imagined by Findikoglu. “It was this beautiful, ephemeral thing,” shares Weir, who delighted in seeing mud creeping onto its delicate lengths as she took a post-ceremony turn around the gardens in a pair of Manolos she found on Vestiaire and bleached in her bathtub. “I like clothes that have a story.”
There were more tales to come. Weir’s bridesmaids, who all wore pretty pink Simone Rocha dresses, helped Weir to de-corset and slip into one of Jaimee Callon McKenna’s crochet confections for the wedding dinner of pea soup, roast beef, and crème brûlée. “I sent Jaimee some ancient stone circle patterns from Scotland,” notes the bride, who took the bewitching aesthetic to the next level with a chain crochet necklace by Arielle de Pinto, a pair of wooden shoes whittled by Callon McKenna’s boyfriend, Paspaley pearl earrings, and a vintage YSL bag scored, again, when the Vestiaire gods were smiling on her.
“I wish I got more pictures of the third look,” laments Weir from Bordeaux, where she is honeymooning. That last dress—another deconstructed Findikoglu number cinched to high heaven—was the cherry on top of the cake for a bride. She never thought she’d get married, but started a “wedding” folder on her phone (just in case!) that comprised a single Findikoglu runway look. (Yep, you guessed it: fall 23, look 26.) Any sceptics who raised an eyebrow at the prospect of such elaborate creations surviving the dance floor were proven wrong when Weir defied tradition by opting for a first cèilidh over a first dance. “There’s something about spinning around,” she smiles, remembering the 40 guests who gave it their all in the hauntingly beautiful castle.
The gothic setting befitted two romantics, who met at a house party nine months ago and got engaged in May while holed up in Botany Bay during a heatwave. (Kelleher later got down on one knee in the walled gardens of Brockwell Park, holding a ring dotted with a “jardin” of emeralds.) Weir’s speech, meanwhile, touched on the Valentine’s Day encounter that cemented Kelleher as her soulmate: each unknowingly bought their new lover a pack of matches hiding a little heart inside. “I met my match(box),” she laughs now. In keeping with their whirlwind courtship, Weir celebrated her bachelorette party the night before the wedding by belting out karaoke classics in Lismore, while wandering around the hallowed halls sipping drinks accessorized with naughty straws. Kelleher went fishing nearby with the stags.
“It was a pretty traditional wedding,” claims Weir, who did her own natural makeup, save for a slick of 24-hour lipstick. (A TikTok phenomenon she adopted to “avoid smudging while snogging.”) Still, a flick through the photographs she entrusted Alexander Ingham Brooke with taking—of the pair exchanging vows with rings made by melting down old jewelry, being sung out of the church by Kelleher’s opera-singer sister, or dancing to folk music in Findikoglu’s fallen-angel attire—shows this wedding was anything but run of the mill. “I felt excited and honored,” says Weir of wearing the work of her contemporary fashion hero on her wedding day. “Her work is like a fairytale.”