A Short, Shift Style Vintage Wedding Dress…

Good morning all!  I felt it was time we featured a Bride wearing a shorter dress on Love My Dress – we see lots of shorter, 50's style numbers gracing these pages, but today's Bride sports more of a sassy 60's style in her short shift dress.  As soon as I saw Bride Emily, I knew she was perfect for Love My Dress.

Emily married Husband Andy on 2 October this year at Hangleton Manor, Brighton.  I love the applique style flower design of Emily's dress, which was from London vintage wedding dress shop, Fur Coat No Knickers… 

"My Mum picked it out. It was orginally 3 sizes to big but the lovely ladies altered it to fit me perfectly. I loved the shift style, the colour and the fact it was so unique. I never wanted a traditional brides dress, and always wanted a short dress. But the main selling point was the lovely girls at Fur Coat No Knickers. They were truly amazing!"

Thanks to the ever-fabulous Emma Case for these photographs.  Emma was supported by second shooter, Joanna Brown.

Love My Dress Wedding Blog ~ Photography Copyright (c) 2010, Emma Case -  second shooter Joanna Brown

"Initially I wasn’t going to have a veil at all, just small head piece but, after realising that I did want to look a bit more 'bridey', I decided a birdcage veil would complement the dress very well."

"The shoes were a pair that Fur Coat No Knickers always had available to try on as standard but I found them so comfortable and I thought they went really well with the dress. The girls also arranged for them to be dyed to match the dress."

"The earrings were also from Fur Coat No Knickers. My friend Lucie picked them out when we went for a fitting. The bracelet was from Accessorize! I tried to find a vintage pearl bracelet but ran out of time in the end."

"My hairdresser was amazing. He was a friend of my Mum's hairdresser. Unfortunately he doesn’t have a website.  I used all Mac makeup – I went for a makeover a few weeks beforehand and my friend Charlie, who is brilliant at makeup, came with me, took notes and recreated the look on the day."

"My Mum's friend did the flowers and got them all from a wholesalers. We left the styling of the flowers up to her…"

Andy's suit was a Gresham Blake…

"Music was very important for our ceremony. We chose the following songs:

To walk down the aisle – Bright Eyes – First day of your life.
Whilst signing the register – Bon Iver – Tracks from 'For Emma, Forever Ago'
To walk out – Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla"

Great choice of music Emily and Andy! I love all of the above, especially Bon Iver, it's such a beautiful album written from the heart {everyone check out this beautiful acoustic performance on the Jools Holland show...}

The couple's chosen wedding venue was Hangleton Manor, Brighton, "It was the first venue we'd looked at but we both just fell in love with it. It is the most listed building in Brighton after the famous pavilion but not many people know it exists. It was also very in keeping with our idea of a vintage wedding…"

"The table plan was a vintage style birdcage found on the internet…"

"We had cupcakes from Angel Food Bakery. We chose them because we spend a lot of time in Angel Food Bakery eating cupcakes so was quite personal for us. We also loved the idea of being able to have lots of different colours and flavours. We also bought some really cute Penguin Bride & Groom cake toppers from, just because I love penguins!!!"

"We spent a lot of time hunting out vintage bottles, jugs and vases for our table flowers to go in, mainly from car boot sales and flea markets. 

For the card table we used my Mum's vintage style suit case and decorated it with vintage lace from snoopers paradise in Brighton.

Andy has found a whole new love of photography and used his own photos as table markers. We photographed key landmarks around Brighton and named our tables after them.

The whole style of the wedding came about just after we got engaged. I found some beautiful paper and ribbon in a Laura Ashley sale and we basically built our ideas and theme around that. I still have lots of it left!!!!"

"James Le Rouge (A friend of a friend) played piano for us between the ceremony and meal. He plays a mixture of contemporary music (Air, Fleet foxes) and classical. He also doubled up as our DJ and he did a great job"

"He also composed us our very own special song as a wedding gift…"

What a beautiful piece of music!

 

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"Take the time to think about what you really want from your day. Inspiration can come from anywhere. You really don't need to spend loads of money. See what can be achieved from calling in favours and making things yourself. It means so much more when you look back and see what you achieved. It's really personal.
What, if anything, inspired you to style your wedding the way you did? Eg, a particular era, muse, colour, place, etc      As mentioned above the Laura Ashley paper sparked our inspiration. But we really didn’t have a theme in mind.  It developed and grew into a vintage theme as we went along.

Don’t worry about little things that may go wrong on the day because you wont even notice them.

Also, trust the people around you to do things and take the pressure off of yourself."

Thank you so much Emily and Andy for sharing your wedding day with Love My Dress – huge congratulations to you both, you look amazing! 🙂

And huge thanks as always to the far too lovely Emma Case.

You can view more Emma Case Photography on the Love My Dress Wedding Blog here.  You can also view more Brides wearing vintage from Fur Coat No Knickers on Love My Dress here.

Much Friday love all 🙂

Annabel xXx

♥