Fashion Photographer Harley Weir Worked With Dilara Findikoglu On Her Fairytale Irish Wedding Dresses

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 autumn/winter 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 Dilara, who kept in cahoots with the vintage-loving bride as Harley truffled out 100-year-old fabrics, while the designer herself was in the throes of finishing her spring/summer 2026 collection.

Vogue Runway readers will know that Weir modelled in Findikoglu’s autumn/winter 2025 show, in which models were invited to play moody but ethereal medieval rockstars who didn’t give a f*ck, and subsequently had the audience spellbound. It was heaven for Harley, 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 Dilara. “It was this beautiful, ephemeral thing,” shares Harley, 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. Harley’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 Dilara number cinched to high heaven – was the cherry on top of the cake for a bride, who 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: AW23 look 26). Any sceptics who raised an eyebrow at the prospect of Dilara’s elaborate creations surviving the dancefloor 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.