Good morning lovelies! I hope you had a good weekend? What were you up to? Any items ticked off the wedding planning check list? I love to open up each week with a beautiful wedding on a Monday morning and today, I'd like to share the very glamorous celebrations of Tanya and Jim with you - who tied the knot on 17th September at Dartmouth House in Mayfair, London.
I first found out about this wedding when one of my favourite dress-makers told me about it - the lovely Dana Bolton {she who kitted me out in my pastel perfect baby blue dress for the Love My Dress Summer Soiree last year}. I am used to seeing Dana design lots of fabulous 50's style frocks, so it was a real treat when I saw the dress that Tanya was wearing...
Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Pippa Mackenzie
"I love the fun of the cheeky dressing in the 20’s and the glamour of 30’s so that, tied in with inspiration from Kiera Knightly’s dress in “Atonement”, ie, the way the skirt was full yet graceful and Nicole Kidman’s red carpet black dress in the Chanel TV commercial - was where took my inspiraton from. I wanted to feel like a starlet for a day and I did. The glamour and glitz of the 30’s is exactly what I had in mind - Dartmouth House was a perfect backdrop for my vision.
After fruitless visits to a variety of bridal boutiques I had to re think. I really value details and had a mental note of all the bits I liked so I drew a sketch of my vision and started researching dress makers. Immediately I was drawn to Dana Bolton's work . Her creations are full of fun and magic often with a vintage feel, just what I was looking for..."
"My necklace was an old 3 tier one I redesigned into a choker with a pendant to compliment the backless dress. I happened upon Hen, a local jeweller and coincidentally a pearl enthusiast so she knew a thing or two about re-stringing and could create just what I wanted. She can be contacted through her husband’s website.
The bottom pearl on the pendant was a lovely gift from Tania at Magpie Vintage. It matches the necklace exactly in colour and was the perfect ending for it. Originally I wanted one of her necklaces as they are just gorgeous however we both agreed my simple pearl choker worked best with the dress..."
"I chose to have an original ostrich feather fan in cream instead of flowers which I bid for on ebay. I also wore a fake fur stole which belonged to my late (glamorous) grandmother..."
"Within a couple of weeks of seeing my sketch, Dana had made a ‘toile’ which was beautiful in its own right! After that it was full steam ahead until about 4 months to go when pregnancy no 3 appeared :O), after much toying and Dana making all sorts of suggestions on how we could adapt the dress and still make it work Jim and I decided to postpone the wedding (the invites hadn’t gone out yet) and have our new arrival alongside our four and two year old as part of the big day instead – how is another story!
Six months later I got back in contact with Dana who had stored the dress perfectly. We worked together on the finer detail, Dana was full of ideas and enthusiasm. Her attention to detail is second to none, both on the dressmaking and also how it is worn in a real environment namely dancing and bending down to pick up small children..."
"Penny from Tigerlily Weddings acted as a consultant for the initial concept and design of the venue decor giving me a digital ‘lookbook’ with ideas and colour pallets based around the elements I wanted. I used this as a foundation and springboard for my creation, I let my imagination and creativity loose resulting in a magical vintage feel with contemporary components. I was so pleased with the end result..."
"I wanted a brooch at the bottom of the backless V and found just the one from a jewellery brochure Dana had. It matched beautifully with my necklace. The original 1930 “dress clips” were also sourced by Dana - she had thought of it all..."
