How To Choose A Vintage Wedding Theme

One of the first — and most com­mon — ques­tions a bride plan­ning her big day will be asked by friends, fam­ily and col­leagues is ‘what’s your theme?’ For some women this is the cue to go off on a 15-minute mono­logue detail­ing every­thing from table dec­o­ra­tions to the type of fab­ric that’ll be on the chairs at the recep­tion, but for oth­ers it can be a slightly embar­rass­ing experience.

Pick­ing a wed­ding theme is just one of the many tasks fac­ing cou­ples plan­ning their wed­ding and it can be dif­fi­cult to set­tle on one over­rid­ing theme for the day — after all, it’s not really for just one day as pho­tographs will immor­talise the theme for­ever. What may have seemed like a good idea at the time may be quite cringe­wor­thy in 20 years time!

Vin­tage wed­dings are one of the most pop­u­lar wed­ding theme trends at the moment, if you can really define it as a sin­gle trend. The vin­tage wed­ding theme cov­ers so many dif­fer­ent types of wed­ding that sim­ply set­tling on a ‘vin­tage wed­ding’ often isn’t enough!

So how do you decide on the per­fect vin­tage theme for your wedding?

Find An Era That Speaks To You

The most obvi­ous way is to find an era or style that speaks you to. You may already have a few ideas; if there’s a par­tic­u­lar retro celebrity whose style you adore or a song you enjoy from a cer­tain era, then you’re halfway there already! Alter­na­tively, you can do a bit of research and look at fash­ions of the time — you’re bound to find some­thing you love eventually.

Be Prac­ti­cal

Prac­ti­cal­ity shouldn’t be the fore­most con­sid­er­a­tion when choos­ing a theme — you can’t help what you fall in love with — but it’s worth think­ing about when con­sid­er­ing the mer­its of a theme. Think about how easy it’s going to be to source dresses, vin­tage wed­ding acces­sories and dec­o­ra­tions from that era. An ‘Amer­i­can 20s’ wed­ding would be a piece of cake to shop for with plenty of 20s-style acces­sories such as bird­cage veils read­ily avail­able from design­ers, but if you wanted to have a more obscure theme then be pre­pared to put some seri­ous plan­ning hours!

Don’t Be Afraid To Mix and Match

Pick­ing a sin­gle theme for a wed­ding is a great way to cre­ate a com­mon tie between every aspect of your wed­ding but it’s impor­tant not to get bogged down try­ing to make absolutely every minute detail con­form with your theme.

Okay, so hav­ing an iPad slap­bang in the mid­dle of 30s themed wed­ding is going to look a lit­tle odd but when it comes to aspects such as wed­ding jew­ellery, don’t be afraid to mix and match slightly. No-one’s going to pick you up on the fact you’re wear­ing a neck­lace more suited to the 50s at a 30s-themed wed­ding unless they are par­tic­u­larly well-versed in style history!

Be Your­self

Some­thing that’s often for­got­ten in the pur­suit of shop­ping for the lat­est wed­ding trends is the impor­tance of just being your­self. Your wed­ding should be a true reflec­tion of you, your part­ner and your rela­tion­ship so if a theme doesn’t fit in with that, don’t go for it.

Even if you have your heart set on a cer­tain theme, then make sure to add your own per­sonal touch to the pro­ceed­ings. It would be easy to recre­ate one of the sets from ‘Down­ton Abbey’ and have a truly authen­tic vin­tage wed­ding, but would that really be a true reflec­tion of your per­son­al­ity? Prob­a­bly not.

The key to a good vin­tage wed­ding theme is match­ing the best of a par­tic­u­lar era with aspects of your own personality!

Most impor­tantly of all, don’t get too hung up on a pick­ing a com­pletely unique wed­ding theme or what’s on trend. Pick some­thing you love and that you feel com­fort­able with and you’re bound to have the hap­pi­est day of your life!

Kate x