A Vintage Wedding Accessory Guide for First Time Brides

So the chances are there are a quite few new brides-to-be out there who, fol­low­ing the cham­pagne and the emo­tional phone call to Mum and Dad, are fac­ing the daunt­ing prospect of actu­ally plan­ning a wedding.

Post-proposal, there are a lot of things to think about and the chances are you’re going to be hit with a whole lot of infor­ma­tion over the next few months as you start to try and piece together your wedding!

Although daunt­ing, plan­ning a wed­ding can actu­ally be a lot of fun too, so always remem­ber not to get too stressed about it! There are a lot of things you’ll need to do over the next cou­ple of weeks, such as draw­ing up a rough guest list and set­ting a rough date but once you’ve got these out of the way, you can start think­ing about themes for your wed­ding and most impor­tantly, your outfit!

One of the most pop­u­lar themes for wed­dings at the moment is vin­tage. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the glam­orous fash­ions of times gone by, vin­tage wed­dings are a unique way to cel­e­brate the best day of your life!

In this post, I’m going to take you through a quick guide to my own spe­cial­ity – vin­tage wed­ding acces­sories! Again, don’t get hung up on mak­ing any final deci­sions right now; just give your­self a few ideas to get excited about!

The Era

Pick­ing an era to theme your vin­tage wed­ding around is a key part of the plan­ning process as every­thing from the dress to the dec­o­ra­tions on tables will be based around this theme! Thank­fully, most vin­tage wed­ding themes are quite broad and there is room for some crossover between eras; typ­i­cal themes include the Golden Age of Hol­ly­wood (think 30s, 40s and 50s) and Coun­try Weddings!

Authen­tic or Designer?

One of the biggest deci­sions a vin­tage bride has to make is between buy­ing authen­tic or vintage-style, both for the dress and the acces­sories. Many brides plan­ning a vin­tage wed­ding will dream of saun­ter­ing down the aisle in a vin­tage Chanel but unfor­tu­nately, vin­tage Chanel is pretty rare – and pretty expen­sive as a result!

By far the eas­ier and more budget-friendly option is to buy vintage-style. Vintage-style wed­ding shoes and acces­sories take their cue from the fash­ions of the past and look just as beau­ti­ful as their authen­tic coun­ter­parts, owing to the ded­i­ca­tion of design­ers such as Har­riet Wilde and Rachel Simp­son!

Which jew­ellery?

Pick­ing the jew­ellery which will accom­pany your per­fect wed­ding dress is fine bal­anc­ing act between com­ple­ment­ing your out­fit and mak­ing a state­ment your guests won’t for­get! As a gen­eral rule, I’d sug­gest going for one state­ment piece – a neck­lace or a gor­geous vin­tage wed­ding tiara make for good state­ments – and com­ple­ment­ing your over­all out­fit with the rest of your jewelry.

Some typ­i­cally vin­tage jew­ellery styles include pearl and Swarovski-crystal encrusted pieces, while flo­ral embell­ish­ments are also com­mon­place among vintage-style designs.

Well, I think that’s prob­a­bly about all the infor­ma­tion you’re going to need at this point – like I said ear­lier, I’m sure you’re already feel­ing a bit over­whelmed with all the infor­ma­tion and advice com­ing your way at the moment! If you do decide that a vin­tage wed­ding is for you, don’t for­get to check out some of my other posts for more vin­tage inspiration!

Kate x