Love Your Curves!

Enjoy the images which go along with Debbie’s advice for brides — they’re from the fab­u­lous Vick­er­staff Pho­tog­ra­phy. Jamie’s images are always incred­i­ble and this shoot has some truly mag­i­cal images of Debbie’s gor­geous curvy brides — you’ll love it and I hope you’ll find the images inspir­ing and the advice use­ful too! With thanks to Glam­our Bridal, Bolton.

Love your curves! by Deb­bie Buck, Glam­our Bridal

For a long time, brides have had a lim­ited choice…..what I would term ‘safe dresses’ – more often satin, sweet­heart neck­line and a ‘V’ of mate­r­ial over the main skirt to cre­ate the right sil­hou­ette. Now, I’m not knock­ing this style of gown, because many brides have looked absolutely beau­ti­ful in them. But imag­ine going into high street stores and being steered towards one par­tic­u­lar type of skirt, blouse, dress or shoes for instance? Wouldn’t you feel pigeon holed? Wouldn’t you want that choice?

The vision for this shoot came about fol­low­ing, what is in my opin­ion, a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of beau­ti­ful and flat­ter­ing gowns for curvy brides.

The cut of a bridal gown is key to cre­at­ing the right look. It’s the cut of the gown that will help a bride with a small bust achieve depth and shape on her chest, just as the right kind of drap­ing detail kind help a bride with a tummy and hips achieve a flat­ter­ing sil­hou­ette and feel instantly slimmer.

Amanda Wyatt is a cham­pion of bridal gowns in sizes 18+ and often uses the amaz­ing Nina Blake­more on both her cat­walk shows at the annual Har­ro­gate trade fairs, but also in some of her adver­tis­ing images on var­i­ous websites.

Fol­low­ing on from this suc­cess, Amanda’s daugh­ter Char­lotte Bal­bier also broke with tra­di­tion and used Nina in her launch event for her eagerly antic­i­pated ‘Roman­tic Deca­dence’ col­lec­tion in May.

‘Sin­cer­ity Plus’ is a range specif­i­cally designed with curves in mind. The struc­ture and design of these gowns offer brides who are size 22+ that added extra sup­port they need in all the right places.

Work­ing well across the sizes, Made­line Gard­ner offers that lit­tle bit some­thing dif­fer­ent in her gowns — I know that our brides have loved being able to try on dresses they pre­vi­ously thought would never suit them.

As a con­sumer, an image of a size 6 model in a fish­tail gown with text ‘we carry 18+ gowns’ sends me mixed mes­sages. I decided to stage my own photo shoot using real plus sized ladies. When I say real, I mean ‘REAL’ — It was essen­tial that all our mod­els var­ied in height and shape and didn’t nec­es­sar­ily con­form to a true bridal size 18. Like every woman, our shapes are individual……height, bot­tom, hips and bust all impact on the kind of gown that it ulti­mately going to be deemed ‘the one’ – it is all about nar­row­ing down what gowns suit which body the best.

I was delighted when 3 lovely ladies vol­un­teered to give up their day for us after putting an advert up on FB ask­ing for con­fi­dently curvy ladies to send us in their details. The response was over­whelm­ing, but even­tu­ally we whit­tled it down to Robyn, Sydrah and Louise – who I’m sure you will agree all look amaz­ing on cam­era. In fact, and this may be con­tro­ver­sial, I believe that they look a bil­lion times bet­ter than some of the ema­ci­ated spec­i­mens I’ve seen cov­er­ing the glossy mag­a­zines adver­tis­ing bridal gowns. Some brides choose to lose weight prior to their wed­ding day for what­ever rea­son they want, some brides are absolutely happy with their weight and don’t want to con­form to the size and shape bridal man­u­fac­tur­ers por­tray in their advertising.

A really impor­tant point I want to add is to assure brides that every bride strug­gles with shape and size. Slim brides strug­gle with just as many body issues as a curvier bride and we work just as hard to ensure that the style and cut of a gown is just right for them also.

Our stel­lar team of wed­ding indus­try pro­fes­sion­als included:

Vick­er­staff Pho­tog­ra­phy – Wed­ding Photographers

Love Bou­quets – Crys­tal Bou­quet Designers

One Beau­ti­ful Day – Make Up Artist

Phi­los­o­phy Flow­ers – Flo­ral Designers

The Cats Whiskers – Cake Designers

The Clois­ters Suite, Hol­i­day Inn, Bolton