Couple's stunning wedding one year after horrific beach accident left groom paralysed

A couple who tied the knot in a stunning ceremony exactly one year after a horrific beach accident left the groom paralysed has spoken out about the most challenging year of their lives.

On December 2, 2016, Scott Hoare decided to go for "one last swim" after spending the day at Coogee Beach in Sydney's east during his first week of university.

The water was cold and Mr Hoare knew he would have to run in and dive off a sandbank into the deeper ocean to brave the chill.

"I ran out so far I dived over the gutter and the tip of my forehead just caught the edge and I snapped my c5 vertebrae," Mr Hoare told Yahoo7.

"If I landed half an inch higher, I would have just skinned my nose."

The 29-year-old said he immediately lost all feeling in his body and was floating in the water with the waves just covering him.

His girlfriend, Angie Minucos, saw him in distress from the beach and ran out to help him to shore where he was treated by lifeguards and taken to hospital.

After emergency surgery, doctors told Mr Hoare he would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.

"It felt like we were out of control," he said.

After receiving the devastating news, Mr Hoare said he questioned if his girlfriend would "stick around" and wouldn't have blamed her if she left.

But to show her commitment, Ms Minucos proposed two days after Mr Hoare came out of Intensive Care.

The couple said the year since the accident has been the worst of their life, especially with all the other health difficulties that arise from paralysis.

"You can’t cough or speak because the chest muscles don’t work," Mr Hoare said. "There is water in the lungs so you can get pneumonia."

Mr Hoare said he lost almost 20 kilograms and went from weighing 96 kilograms to just 75.

He has credited much of his ongoing recovery success with building up his mental state before working on his physical rehabilitation.

"I’m letting [the physical part] come to me rather than chasing it," Mr Hoare said.

"The battle everyone sees is the physical battle, but it's the battle that happens inside your head is the one that's going to make or break you."

Mr Hoare said anything is possible with a spinal cord injury and just this month he showered himself for the first time in a year.

"At one stage I was getting so upset because it took me 15 minutes to open my laptop and now it takes me 15 seconds," he said.

Mr Hoare said Ms Minucos has "kept him going," and on December 2, exactly one year after the accident, they tied the knot at Narrabeen Surf Life Saving Club.

There were 150 guests and the ceremony was live-streamed to friends around the world who couldn't be there.

The couple first met in Canada while they were both travelling and were friends for six months before moving back to Australia together.

"We came back last year and were only in the country for six months before the accident," Ms Minucos told Yahoo7.

Mr Hoare said recovery is a long process and he is focusing on achieving tasks each day at a time. He has started a blog, Lift With Scott, to update people on his journey.

"Sometimes I'll see a reflection of myself and have this crash and think 'how am I okay with this?'"

"But those thoughts will only last last 10 or 15 seconds before I snap back."

The Hoares are spending Christmas with Angie's "massive" family.

"They’ve got some stairs out the front, so all of the brothers-in-law pick me up in the wheelchair and carry me in," Mr Hoare said.

"They've been by our side from the first second it happened."