The Wedding Singers

Beccy Cole and Libby O’Donovan’s romance featured all the joy of a country music love song, and on their wedding day, they invited Samantha Trenoweth along to celebrate.

- Samantha Trenoweth

Country music star Beccy Cole and cabaret singer Libby O’Donovan are in a spin. They’re due to be married in 22 hours in a perfectly picturesque vineyard in the Adelaide Hills, but the flower girl’s dress is missing. The flower girl’s name is Maisy. She’s eight years old, strawberry blonde with a dusting of freckles, Libby’s daughter from an earlier relationship and, though she doesn’t know it yet, Maisy will be the star of this wedding.

“As soon as the result of the plebiscite was announced, she went straight into, ‘When’s the party? I’ve invited all my friends to be flower girls. I want a dress with purple spots and can I please be the one who says, you may kiss the bride.’ She was just so into it,” Libby chuckles. “She adores Beccy. She calls her Cowgirl and, now that we’re allowed to, it just seems natural to her that Cowgirl and Mum get married.”

Maisy’s dress should have been delivered at midday but at 5pm there’s still no sign of it. Libby’s friend Michele (the kind of friend to be relied on in an emergency) has made a last-minute dash to Target and now sits in her lounge room in a cloud of polyester chiffon, purple pom-poms and sewing thread. It’s taken a village to pull off this wedding.

“As soon as the legislation was carried in parliament, we set the date,” Beccy explains. “So it’s come together quickly. We didn’t want to wait. Once we were allowed to be married, there was no question that we would do it.”

Beccy and Libby first caught sight of each other seven years ago at Port Hedland airport in Western Australia. They were both passing through on the way to and from gigs. Their eyes met, sparks flew (Libby famously claimed that she would move to Port Hedland to marry the mystery woman) but neither thought they would see the other again.