Top Tips for a Vintage Wedding

Vin­tage wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Simon Hud­speth (Click to read “I wish we could do it again!”)

Many cou­ples are embrac­ing the vin­tage wed­ding trend for 2012 and 2013, and mix­ing up vin­tage with mod­ern ideas to give a unique feel to their wed­ding day. But it’s not as easy as you think – find­ing spe­cial and authen­tic, one-off pieces can be a real chore, espe­cially if you need to buy in bulk for a large guest list. But fear not, for we are here to clue you in on what’s what in the world of vin­tage weddings.

Find­ing your vin­tage wed­ding dress

You may well have your heart set on an authen­tic vin­tage wed­ding dress rather than a mod­ern take on one, but there are many design­ers cre­at­ing the vin­tage style within their collections.

If you do decide to go down the authen­tic route then check out your local char­ity shops or hunt down spe­cial­ist vin­tage shops that may well be able to help you with the whole look, includ­ing vin­tage wed­ding corsets.

If you do find that mag­i­cal gem of a dress make sure you try it on as siz­ing has changed over the years, remem­ber it is much eas­ier to take a dress in than let it out! And def­i­nitely check for stains and tears as some dresses may be too far gone to save.

Addi­tion­ally, if they don’t have what you are look­ing for, con­sider hav­ing a word with them and explain­ing what you are look­ing for. They’ll more than likely be happy to put up a poster or give you a call if any­thing suit­able comes in.

The per­fect shoes for a vin­tage wedding

If you do find the per­fect vin­tage wed­ding dress it can be tricky to get the right style shoe in the size and color you want. Again it may be best to con­cen­trate on spe­cial­ist vin­tage stores. Try­ing them on is a must as siz­ing will be cru­cial – noth­ing worse than the agony of shoes that are too tight on your big day!

What I would sug­gest it either buy­ing new shoes in the style that suits your dress, and get­ting them pro­fes­sion­ally dyed to match the color. You could also think about get­ting shoes made for you. It often isn’t as expen­sive as you think but you would need to order early as they can take some time to make. I missed out by leav­ing it too late; my wed­ding dress designer had her shoes made by a com­pany in Italy and the work shop closed down for the whole of August!

Vin­tage wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Natasha Thomp­son. Click to see Deb­bie and Matthew’s wedding

Vin­tage acces­sories for wed­ding recep­tion tables

Vin­tage china is a pop­u­lar and beau­ti­ful way to dress your wed­ding tables. Check out your local char­ity shops, jum­ble sales, car boot sales and your local sec­ond hand web­sites. You could even show local char­ity shops what style you are after and ask if they could save it back for you.

Mix and match, but it is good to go with a cen­tral theme. Think flow­ery, dotty or any­thing that has a shade of pink or blue… etc. Check out wed­ding blogs and cre­ate a mood board with all your ideas. It well help you visu­alise exactly what you are try­ing to create.

Vin­tage wed­ding bou­quet and flowers

Pop into your local florist and ask them if you can look through their wed­ding ideas book so you can get an idea of what they can do. Check out pho­tos of wed­dings from the era you are work­ing to get ideas on what flow­ers and size/shape of bou­quet were in fashion.

You could even col­lect wild flow­ers your­self to cre­ate a DIY bou­quet for a more relaxed vin­tage boho style. Whichever way you do it, you’ll have a lot of fun get­ting a vin­tage flo­ral dis­play together!

Styl­ish vin­tage wed­ding transportation

It’s always been cool to turn up to your wed­ding in a clas­sic car, a Rolls-Royce or maybe a vin­tage sports car of some sort. There are count­less small busi­nesses that offer vin­tage and clas­sic wed­ding cars com­plete with chauf­feur, to escort you to and from your big day.

Just make sure your com­pany of choice pays atten­tion to main­te­nance – you wouldn’t to get stranded on your big day!

Food – Food – Food – Cake — Food!

The one thing every­body seems to remem­ber from a wed­ding is the food! It keeps us ener­gised and ready to enjoy the day to the fullest.

With the boom in vin­tage fash­ion and lifestyle, a vari­ety of sub-industries have also flour­ished, one being the birth of vin­tage cater­ing. Using clas­sic recopies and acces­sories there are plenty of great cater­ing com­pa­nies that will put on a spread even your grand­mother would be proud of.

I sup­pose you could just ask your grand­par­ents to arrange the food? They wouldn’t even have to try to make it authen­ti­cally vin­tage! Cake mak­ers are also get­ting used to re-creating vin­tage cakes for wed­dings, but per­son­ally I like the “Chef Grandma” idea. Wish I’d thought of it earlier!

Vin­tage wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Rob & Sarah Gille­spie. Click to see this fab­u­lous etsy-filled wedding!

The Finer Details

There’s no point going to all this effort if you end up hav­ing your vin­tage wed­ding in one of those mod­ern, fancy hotels. The key to the per­fect vin­tage wed­ding is to focus on con­ti­nu­ity — vin­tage con­ti­nu­ity. Try an old scout hall or a school house – any­thing that has been around for a long time and adds to the illu­sion of trav­el­ling back in time.

Like­wise, don’t be afraid to tell your guests what to wear. Many of your fam­ily mem­bers will already have vin­tage suits and dresses in their wardrobe and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to get them out and blow off the moth-balls. Why not go the whole nine yards and give them a choice of vin­tage hair­styles and acces­sories that you’d like them to try out for the day – it’ll be fun!

Sara is a fash­ion blog­ger for an online cloth­ing shop called Miinto. She had her fairy tale vin­tage wed­ding back in sum­mer 2011 and still loves adding beau­ti­ful vin­tage fash­ion pieces to her wardrobe.