An EBay Dream Wedding Dress for a Vintage Inspired Bride…

Hi Everyone 🙂  This morning, I have one of those weddings I feel very close to, because this particular Bride was so influenced by Love My Dress when she was planning her wedding. Jackie and David got married on 25 February 2011 at Hotel du Vin, Tunbridge Wells.  I recognised Jackie’s dress in an instant, because it is the same, beautiful, old hollywood glamour inspired design that I wore on my own wedding day – ‘Selene’ by Jenny Packham

“After seeing Annabel looking so beautiful in her Selene wedding dress on the Love My Dress Wedding Blog, I was inspired to go and try it on in the Jenny Packham shop in London. I had liked the dress right from when David and I initially got engaged in January 2008, but was worried that all that silk satin might not be flattering (little did I know that actually you NEED some curves to look good in a Jenny Packham dress!).  I absolutely loved it, but had a big wobble over the cost, and was about to give up on it when I randomly looked on eBay and there it was – in exactly the right size.  So I got my dream dress for one third of what it would have cost brand new.”
Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Jodie Chapman

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“I purchased my dress second-hand off eBay for £620!!!  I was extremely proud of getting such a bargain and told EVERYONE at the wedding about it, much to my mum’s dismay!”

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“My wonderful ostrich feather shrug was from Oasis…”

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“I wanted an art deco engagement ring and the vintage ones were a bit pricey!  London Victorian Ring Company do a lot of art deco reproduction rings and they supplied our wedding rings as well.

Donal Casey of Pollen Flowers was absolutely BRILLIANT.  I had gone to a couple of florists in Tunbridge Wells and they were good, but expensive!  I’d seen a lot of Donal’s work online and really liked his obvious feel for vintage inspired weddings. 

When we went to Brighton for David’s first consultation with Hugo Morris Tailors, we combined the trip with a visit to Donal’s premises in Hove.  He was incredibly helpful and really “got” what I was looking for in terms of flowers.  Pollen Flowers also have an excellent stock of props/accessories (candelabra, hurricane lamps, birdcages, chair covers) and it was very helpful to have a “one stop shop” for the items I was looking for…”

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“I hired Clare Parker of Marvellous Make-Up –  I wanted somebody who specialised in vintage hair/make-up, but most artists were based in London and it was quite expensive for them to travel to Kent.  I found Clare by randomly Googling “vintage portraits Kent”, found a photographer doing said portraits and Clare was credited as the hairdresser/make-up artist. 

Clare was fantastic and really knows her vintage – when I walked into her house for my hair/make-up trial and saw a genuine 1930s wedding dress on a dummy, I knew we were going to get along!”

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“David and I chose to walk in together.  He came to the room to collect me beforehand and I’m so glad he did – it was quite emotional seeing each other for the first time and I’m glad we did so in private!

David’s suit was by Hugo Morris in Brighton. They were a fabulous supplier who did a wonderful job on David’s suit (I showed them a picture of my dress and they tailored the design specifically to fit in with the dress) and also made the waistcoat, tie and shirt to match.”

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“I walked down the aisle to ‘Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism’ as performed by the Vitamin String Quartet!  Traditional wedding music makes me cringe a wee bit, but I really struggled to find something suitable for the wedding – Vitamin String Quartet produce string arrangements of popular artists’ songs – if you are wanting to walk up the aisle to Muse’s “Stockholm Syndrome” (which I nearly did!), they are the place to go to find versions that won’t scare your Aunty! 

We had the theme from the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Muse’s ‘Feeling Good’ for the signing of the register, and walked out to Sigur Ros’ ‘Hoppipolla’.”

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“I’ve always loved vintage, although I don’t wear it as much as I used to (we are keen cyclists and finger waves and pencil skirts don’t really work on a bike!).  While David is not really into the vintage scene, he does love the 1920s (his favourite book is Brideshead Revisited and yes, we do have a teddy bear called Aloysius at home!). 

I would describe our wedding as being vintage inspired rather than a vintage wedding as such – had it been a purely “vintage” wedding, we couldn’t have had the theme from the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the signing of the register, and as Muse are my favourite band, I wanted to bring that into the wedding somewhere as well.”

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“Joanna Walton of The Yummy Cake Company did our lovely cake.  We had originally intended to go with a cake from Waitrose or M&S, but Joanna’s cake was only slightly more expensive than a cake from either shop, and her lemon sponge was delicious!”

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“As part of our decor, we had photographs up of David’s immediate family, all of whom have sadly left us.  It was a nice way to remember them on the day….”

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“We also chose Hotel du Vin as we were able to source our own wine for the wedding – we have friends in the wine industry, so it was really important to us that we were able to source our wine from them.

We had met the owners of the vineyard that supplied our red wine a couple of times at various functions, and they very kindly sent us a bottle of their premium wine as a wedding present!”

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Words of Wedded Wisdom…

“Allow yourself plenty of time to organise the wedding – we organised ours in five months, and while all the frantic planning paid off in the end, it was pretty stressful, particularly as I had no family in the UK to delegate to. 

Etsy.com is a fantastic resource, particularly the Alchemy requests – I used an Alchemy request to obtain the tandem bike graphic I used for our stationery and the rest of the stationery was done with good old Microsoft Word. 

The other thing I would say is that it is definitely worth breaking your budget to get the photographer you really want – Jodie is an absolute genius and we are so glad we spent that money. 

Finally, if you don’t think you can afford your dream dress, don’t give up looking – I heard loads of stories of brides finding their dream dress in a vintage store or on eBay for £500, and I never thought it would happen to me, but it did!”

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Brides dress – Selene, by Jenny Packham
Brides ostrich feather cape – Oasis
Brides shoes – ‘Harriet’ Shoe, by Rainbow Club
Brides accessories – Flo & Percy Headband
Grooms Suit – Hugo Morris in Brighton + Herring Shoes
Makeup Artist – Marvellous Make-Up
Venue – Hotel du Vin, Tunbridge Wells
Cake – The Yummy Cake Company
Flowers – Pollen Flowers
Rings – London Victorian Ring Company
Photographer – Jodie Chapman
Videographer – Kissinggate Video

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Did you note the words of wisdom there?!?  It is SO important to book the very best when it comes to services like your Cinematographer and Photographer…

“Ben Marlow from Kissinggate Video produced our video;  David was not keen on having our wedding videod initially, but because a lot of my family live in New Zealand and were unable to attend the wedding, I wanted to have the wedding either filmed or webcast.  Initially, we were going to go with the webcast, but I am so glad we went with Ben as he is a genius and a thoroughly nice bloke to boot!

Our photographer was the wonderful, fabulous and absolutely brilliant Jodie Chapman who made David and I look better on film than we have ever looked in our entire lives!  We broke the budget on our photography/videographer, but I am SO GLAD we did – it was worth every penny!”

Huge congratulations Jackie, I am so very touched that this blog inspired you so before your wedding. I think you look utterly gorgeous in your Jenny Packham dress!!! A huge thank you from me to Wedding Videographer Ben Marlow of Kissinggate Video  and one of my all-time-favourite Wedding Photographers, Jodie Chapman, for allowing their wonderful work to be shared on my blog today 🙂

And that just leaves me to invite you my lovely readers to leave a comment below about this beautiful wedding – go on, make Jackie’s day! 🙂

Much Friday love to you all,

Annabel xXx

Annabel

Annabel View all Annabel's articles

Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.

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