Cottagecore wedding inspiration has become so much more than a passing aesthetic. For many couples, its mix of garden flowers, patterned fabrics, gathered tables and homemade detail offers a welcome alternative to weddings designed around scale, spectacle and formality.
This shoot was created at Alfriston Gardens in East Sussex by three recommended members of our wedding directory: planner/stylist Luna And The Lane, with photography by Lucy Fergusson and flowers by Dove & Myrtle. Together with dresses by Velvet Queen, make-up by Kendols Beauty and model Jasmine Wode, they imagined a cottagecore wedding filled with colour, texture and charming detail that could be adapted for celebrations of many different sizes and budgets.
As the concept developed, the team also began looking more closely at the imagery associated with cottagecore weddings and the English countryside, where people of colour remain noticeably underrepresented. Rather than making diversity the subject of the shoot, they wanted to take responsibility for ensuring the work they create reflects a broader range of the couples who may see themselves within it.
Words by Charley Morgan of Luna And The Lane follow. Enjoy!
We always find that spring is the most inspiring season…
We’re coming out of the depths of winter, the world is awakening and filling with colour and we’re gearing up for wedding season to begin again. So this spring, we felt we were due a styled shoot, not only to encapsulate the joys of the season, but to put ourselves back in the creative headspace of delivering weddings.
With spring in mind, we started researching a cottagecore theme, as we see this imagery a lot on our own Pinterest boards. It feels like our generation’s lifestyle choices are moving away from the busy, fast-paced ‘grind’ that society has created for us and people want to take a step back, relax and unlock their whimsy. They want to build thoughtful, beautiful homes, reconnect with nature and learn to embrace a slower pace of life.
We’re seeing a lot of maximalist, high-end shoots at the moment…
…which of course are absolutely gorgeous, but aren’t easy for the average couple to reproduce. It seems the new norm in wedding marketing is luxury, which in itself is unattainable for most clients.
While we do love playing with luxe, larger-than-life ideas, we don’t want our own marketing to alienate the majority of couples. We felt that cottagecore would resonate more with our clients. You can still have detailed, beautiful weddings, but they don’t have to be as grand as some of the weddings we see in the media.
We also wanted to remember the core meaning of weddings: it’s about love. While we want every wedding to look incredible, we want it to be about the feelings first and foremost.
We set our photoshoot at Alfriston Gardens in East Sussex, a beautiful purpose-built barn that brings a touch of luxury to the barn wedding setting. It was the perfect backdrop for our theme of ‘cottagecore, but make it indulgent’.
With the patterned linen from Just 4 Linen giving us the perfect canvas for the table, we aimed to create something focused on our keywords: whimsical, homegrown and personal.
Stunning flowers that looked as though they had come straight from an English garden, created by Jane at Dove & Myrtle, were mixed amongst fruit, vegetables and candles to encapsulate the feeling of popping into Granny’s kitchen while she’s preparing dinner.
As our ideas came together, we noticed how rarely cottagecore imagery, in wedding content and everyday life alike, features people of colour. People of colour appear in more editorial, contemporary wedding shoots, yet they are largely absent from imagery of the English countryside, and we found ourselves asking why that should be.
This aesthetic, with its celebration of home, nature and a gentler pace of life, belongs to everyone.
A few years ago, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was a great deal of discussion about representation within the wedding industry. Many of us vowed to do better in representing everyone through our marketing.
That hasn’t transpired quite as we hoped. Much of the imagery we see has returned to featuring predominantly white models and the industry is not as diverse in its representation as it promised to become.
In creating this shoot, we wanted to hold ourselves to that promise. We work with couples from many different cultures, religions and backgrounds and one of the great joys of our work is weaving the heritages and identities of both families into a wedding day. Even so, we can recognise that our own imagery hasn’t always reflected this.
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