How To Choose The Perfect Vintage Wedding Shoes

Some women would argue that shoes aren’t a mat­ter of life or death; they’re far more impor­tant than that! This is espe­cially true when it comes to choos­ing wed­ding shoes. A bad pair of shoes can throw off an entire bridal ensem­ble, not to men­tion mak­ing the best day of your life extremely uncomfortable.

As most mar­ried women will tell you, choos­ing wed­ding shoes is hard but it could be argued that pick­ing vin­tage wed­ding shoes is even harder. Not only do you have to con­sider all of the usual fac­tors that will deter­mine which shoes you buy, but you also have to match your wed­ding shoes to the era you’ll be evok­ing in your ceremony!

With that in mind, I’ve put together a quick guide to help you pick your per­fect vin­tage wed­ding shoes — whether you’re hav­ing a full blown vin­tage wed­ding or just fancy adding a bit of a vin­tage flour­ish to your bridal outfit.

Choose Your Shoes After The Dress, But Before The First Fitting

The dress will obvi­ously be the first thing on most brides’ shop­ping lists, but the shoes should def­i­nitely be a close sec­ond. Your choice of dress will ulti­mately influ­ence the style, mate­r­ial and color of your shoes, so you’ll need to know what you’ll be wear­ing before you choose your shoes.

How­ever, you will need to have your shoes before the first fit­ting of your dress to accom­mo­date for any alter­ations that need to be made to the hem of the dress.

What Style?

The style of your wed­ding shoes will mostly be deter­mined by the mate­r­ial and color of your dress — essen­tially, you need to match your shoes with your dress. How­ever, don’t choose shoes just because they match well if you’re not sure that you like them!

Don’t be afraid to think out of the box slightly either. You could match the color of your shoes to the color of your brides­maids’ dresses, which will allow you to get away from the tra­di­tional white wed­ding shoes and also make a big statement!

When choos­ing vin­tage wed­ding shoes, there are a cou­ple of other fac­tors that come into play too. You’ll want to match your shoes to the era you’ve based your wed­ding on. Shoes don’t tend to be as var­ied in their style as other vin­tage bridal acces­sories, so you can get away with wear­ing a pair of ‘30s shoes at a ‘20s wed­ding, but it’s best to stick with your theme!

Heels: How High?

Ever a point of con­tention for brides, decid­ing on the ‘right’ heel height for you means strik­ing a bal­ance between style and com­fort. You’ll also need to fac­tor in the length of your dress, although alter­ations can usu­ally be made to accom­mo­date for most shoes.

The best advice would be to wear the type of heel you would usu­ally wear on a night out. So if you wear kit­ten heels, then a tow­er­ing stiletto shoe prob­a­bly isn’t for you. Remem­ber that you’re going to be on your feet all day too — don’t put your­self through agony sim­ply because you love a cer­tain pair of shoes!

Stay on Budget

Always the most bor­ing point of a shop­ping guide, but prob­a­bly the most impor­tant — stick within your assigned bud­get for shoes. It’s easy to get car­ried away and splash out a bit more than you planned to — espe­cially if you’re shop­ping for vin­tage shoes and spot a pair of authen­tic vin­tage heels that you sim­ply must have! But remem­ber that extra £200 you’ve spent on shoes will have to come from some­where, be it the cater­ing or your own accessories!

When buy­ing vin­tage wed­ding shoes, mak­ing the deci­sion between authen­tic and vintage-inspired shoes can be dif­fi­cult; the idea of wear­ing authen­tic vin­tage shoes is prob­a­bly more roman­tic but it’s def­i­nitely a more costly and time-consuming route. Vintage-inspired shoes are just as gor­geous and sig­nif­i­cantly eas­ier to get your hands on. Just take a look at col­lec­tions by design­ers such as Rachel Simp­son for proof!

Oh, and one last tip — enjoy your­self! The chances are you’ll only get to shop for a bridal out­fit once, so make the most of it and don’t get over­whelmed by stress!