Three decades of Sunshine Coast weddings | Photos
From sports stars to stunt weddings and others who said ‘I do’, check out some nuptials that took place over the past 30 years in the Sunshine Coast and Noosa.
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Wedding photography has changed a great deal over the past 30 years and the Sunshine Coast has long been a destination that celebrities and many others want to tie the knot.
Wedding photographer Lou O’Brien has photographed weddings since the 1990s and started her own business 11 years ago.
She was a press photographer at the Sunshine Coast Daily before she turned to weddings full-time.
Mrs O’Brien started out photographing with colour or black and white film so “every shot counted” and, thanks to a career in the media, she never felt pressure at weddings.
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE ALL THE WEDDINGS IN PHOTOS
Mrs O’Brien said in the early 2000s wedding guests did not have an understanding of the etiquette around photography at weddings, given it was all so new to them.
“That was before the term ‘unplugged wedding’,” she said.
“Everyone would have these cameras up and weren’t living in the moment.”
An unplugged wedding is when the couple getting married asks their guests to put away their phones, cameras or other devices.
The photographer said the other big change was the sharing of digital files rather than having a hard copy of a photograph or a wedding album.
Mrs O’Brien said one thing she loved about a ’90s or early noughties wedding was that people would often send a photograph with a thankyou note in the mail, which was a “tangible” memory of the event.
“One thing I love about now, and I like to tell a lot of my couples, is to throw the rule book out,” she said.
“There’s no such thing as a traditional wedding anymore.”
Fellow wedding photographer Tara Lee said she thought the biggest change between the weddings of 20 or 30 years ago and now was that couples were planning weddings around their dreams and lives.
“You can make your own traditions and enjoy the day celebrating your lives the way you want,” she said.
Check out some of the photographs pulled from the Sunshine Coast Daily archives that shows how much weddings have changed over a 30-year period.
Celebrity weddings
Hayley Lewis and Greg Taylor
Swimming star Hayley Lewis married childhood sweetheart Greg Taylor at Noosa in 1997.
Lewis is an 11-time Commonwealth Games swimming medallist who sensationally won five gold medals at the Auckland 1990 games.
She was also a triple Olympian who won two medals in 1992 in Barcelona.
Michael Crocker and Sally Carne
In 2008, Melbourne Storm player Michael Crocker married Sally Carne at Sunshine Beach.
Rugby league legend Billy Slater was a groomsman.
League players in attendance included Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk, Anthony Minichiello, Steve Turner, Will Chambers, Brett White and Ryan Hoffman.
Sami Muirhead and Sam Bohner
Sunshine Coast radio personality Samille (known as Sami) Muirhead wed Sam Bohner under the shade of a 200-year-old fig tree, in Buderim, in 2010.
The MixFM presenter was walked down the aisle by her dad and had two Great Danes by her side too.
Maddison Langer and Justin Casser
League legend Allan Langer walked his daughter Maddison Langer down the aisle in 2013 at Dicky Beach.
He told the Sunshine Coast Daily at the time that he was a little nervous before the ceremony.
Maddison wore a version of the gown her mother Janine wore on her own wedding day.
Stunt weddings
Jason Smith and Janelle Brown
One couple took a deep dive into married life when they decided to have their wedding photos taken at Sea Life Sunshine Coast (then Under Water World) in 2002.
Jason Smith and Janelle Brown dived into married life at the Mooloolaba venue with a few shark friends surrounding them for their photographs.
Rodney Dedman and Danielle Mair
Rodney Dedman and other members of the bridal party arrived from the sky in 2005 when he wed Danielle Mair.
The couple said “I do” at Point Cartwright following the spectacular entrance.
Remember trash the dress?
In the early 2010s the “trash the dress” fad gained popularity worldwide.
Many sources credit Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper for starting the trend in 2001.
Brides essentially pose in their dresses in lakes, in mud or have things thrown at them in a final wedding photo shoot.
In 2012, 30 women converged at Maleny Dairies to trash their wedding dresses and raise money for charity.
Weddings over the decades
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