A Very Vintage Wedding

It’s a real pleasure to be guesting for Rebekah and Ami this week. I’m a UK based wedding planner who writes her own blog about vintage weddings, but having recently been married I wanted to share my experiences with US brides and so I contacted Elizabeth Anne Designs. I hope I don’t disappoint!

We had an intimate budget wedding in August at a beautiful Georgian mansion called Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park on the outskirts of London.

{Pembroke Lodge}

As we both love all things vintage and enjoy visiting historical sites, it made perfect sense to opt for a theme based on my favourite era-the 1930s. The lodge is surrounded by some of the oldest parkland in England and has its own Royal gardens, so it made the perfect spot for our drinks reception and photos. As it is open to the public is was a really lovely experience to arrive in the car with my bridesmaids waiting outside to see people watching and cheering as I arrived. Throughout the day various ladies approached us to congratulate us and one even offered to tie the ribbon at the back of my dress when it came undone!

When I design a wedding for a client, I don’t do it by halves. I love to use deep and rich colours so anyone that decides to hire me will like my style enough to inject it into their day. As a rather fickle bride, changed my mind so many times throughout our engagement (we had two years which is quite a long time) and I went from dusky pink and sage green to what we eventually had-deep bluey/purple and gold with peacock feathers. The colours were very strong and the décor in the lodge was light and airy so we had to be careful that the deeper shades were used to accent rather than dominate-they came into play in the form of the flowers and bridesmaids dresses…

For a touch of 1930s, our florist used old crystal decanters, medicine bottles and some of my old cobalt blue and gilt teacups which date from the late 1800s up to the 1920s to sit the hydrangeas in.

I made all of the stationery (apart from our invitations) myself using 1940s floral wallpaper for the place cards and carried this through for our escort table. Our Order-of the-Day books had our very own Art Deco style monogram printed on the front and the table names the same. You can find out how to make these a little later on…

Sugar flowers, once considered very old fashioned during the 80s and 90s are now making a huge come back in the UK-I just love them. Our beautiful two tier chocolate and Kahlua cake also came with 10 stunning cupcakes, each with either a rose, peony or hydrangea cluster on top. As an extra special touch, there was gold leaf peeping underneath the pile of roses on the top tier and over the top of some of the cupcakes. It was a real work of art and quite the talking point for our guests throughout the day.

So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little taster and has inspired you to come back and read some more later in the week!

Tiffany Grant-Riley

* all professional photos credit to Matt Faber