Still in love with vin­tage wed­dings? I am. Gor­geous retro styling and old fash­ioned lace and pret­ti­ness gets me every time. But vin­tage has been around for a few years and now it’s time for change! Today, the Eng­lish Wed­ding blog brings you…

The Future of Vintage!

Exclu­sively on the Eng­lish Wed­ding blog, this gor­geous alter­na­tive vin­tage wed­ding shoot fea­tures stars of the UK wed­ding scene: Char­lotte Bal­bier wed­ding dresses shine in the unique set­ting of Cheshire’s Styal Lodge.

The brain­child of wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Jonny Draper and Georgina Higham who, along with her mum and sis­ters, runs Styal Lodge wed­ding venue — this shoot reveals a stun­ning and excit­ing future for vin­tage wed­dings: full of colour and quirk­i­ness, with a focus on details and acces­sories to com­ple­ment those gor­geous Char­lotte Bal­bier dresses (kindly sup­plied by The White Closet bridal bou­tique in Didsbury).

The Future of Vin­tage is bright and quirky, full of colour and vibrance, with excit­ing acces­sories and cre­ative details — it looks good enough to eat!

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Jonny Draper explains how the Future of Vin­tage shoot came about

“What started out as a chat with Georgina (Man­ager of Styal Lodge) about a spring bridal shoot turned into some­thing we didn’t quite expect!

“The more we talked about what we could do and who we could involve, the more ideas we had and the more we realised that we wanted it to become a shoot that not only inspired but one that wasn’t afraid to make state­ments and really show that there is no such thing as one par­tic­u­lar style or idea.

“That was when ‘The Future of Vin­tage’ shoot was born.

“Straight away we knew there were cer­tain peo­ple who could help bring the ideas to life and that’s where Char­lotte Bal­bier, The White Closet, Silk Wed­ding Videos, Emma Draper MUA, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon and Pink Pep­per came in!”

Georgina Higham, Man­ager of Styal Lodge wed­ding venue, shared her inspi­ra­tion for the Future of Vin­tage shoot

“Styal Lodge is a new wed­ding venue with a very unique con­cept behind it. We offer cou­ples the chance to cre­ate their per­fect wed­ding in their own way all in a beau­ti­ful set­ting. As we have grown in the first year I realised the impor­tance of work­ing with local ‘wed­ding peo­ple’ (I like to think of every­one in a lit­tle wed­ding bub­ble!) it’s amaz­ing how much you can learn from all areas of wed­dings not just your lit­tle bit.

“So I sat down with Jonny Draper, who I was lucky enough to meet back when we opened and imme­di­ately admired his style and approach to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy, and we had the idea of cre­at­ing a photo shoot that would be some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent and inspi­ra­tional for all who saw it.

“The theme we began work­ing with was a vin­tage con­cept that had sort of gone off on a tan­gent and we arrived at the future of vin­tage idea– a kind of ‘Vin­tage Pop Art’!

“It was impor­tant to get the right peo­ple involved so one of our cater­ers Pink Pep­per joined to help with the over­all design and pro­vide us with their fab­u­lously beau­ti­ful col­lec­tion of vin­tage china, it really is so so gor­geous and looked perfect.

“We also had help from Spe­cial Days Events with extra props and chair cov­ers, and we had ‘And the Dish Ran Away With The Spoon’ to pro­vide us with vibrant cup­cakes, jam tarts and mini meringues (heav­enly!) which we used through­out the table design and com­ple­mented the look.

“We were lucky to have dress designer Char­lotte Bal­bier on board with her beau­ti­ful dresses, along with Nikki Graeme from The White Closet Bridal Bou­tique and with Emma Draper as make up artist and Eve Broad­hurst look­ing after hair the shoot was brought to life. I felt very priv­i­leged to be work­ing with such tal­ented peo­ple and I believe we really achieved some­thing spe­cial thanks to the help and sup­port of every­one involved.”

The stun­ning cup­cakes and colour­ful meringues came from And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon.

Anna Gill told me, “When Jonny first men­tioned the idea for the future of vin­tage shoot and the type of look that he and Georgina were try­ing to achieve, we felt like the tim­ing couldn’t have been bet­ter as we had very recently been exper­i­ment­ing in the kitchen with colours and ‘twists’ on the obvi­ous cake choices for wed­dings, due to lots of cus­tomer demand for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

“This is what drove us to pro­duce our ‘acid-colour’ meringues as we felt they fit­ted per­fectly with the colour-pops from the acces­sories and make-up on the day and our jam tarts were a colour­ful nod to the tra­di­tional British teatime treat!

“We love tra­di­tional as much as the next per­son but we always love to work on some­thing a lit­tle quirky for a wed­ding and we felt this shoot show­cases that perfectly.”

Vin­tage inspired dresses by Char­lotte Bal­bier were the star of the show on The Future of Vin­tage shoot.

Char­lotte says, “It’s always excit­ing being invited to be involved in new projects and shoots and espe­cially when the style of shoot is so cool and unique!

“The styling was very on brand with Char­lotte Bal­bier and how the brand is mov­ing for­ward.… Bridal fash­ion takes a new direc­tion with mod­ern day vintage!”

The White Closet bou­tique pro­vided Char­lotte Bal­bier wed­ding dresses for The Future of Vintage.

Nikki Graeme from The White Closet was thrilled when Jonny & Georgina asked them to be involved in the shoot.

“As a vintage-inspired bou­tique this imme­di­ately sounded like our cup of tea. We adore Char­lotte Balbier’s col­lec­tion; her dresses offer our brides a great choice whether the bride opts for a slim fit­ted gown with an art deco feel, or indulges her love for lace.

“We’re huge fans of her short dresses which are a nod to the fifties era but with a cheeky fun charm.

“Charlotte’s Fay dress, along with the candy bright make-up and acces­sories demon­strate the ever evolv­ing nature of vin­tage. “The Future of Vin­tage” is clear to see in these stun­ning images.”

Emma Draper added a blast of glo­ri­ous colour for the mod­els’ make up.

“I was very excited when I was asked to be a part of the “Future of vin­tage” shoot, espe­cially as I would be work­ing with the finest wed­ding experts. “Vin­tage” is some­thing which gets talked about a lot by brides of today, but it can mean dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent people.

“For this shoot we wanted to move vin­tage on even fur­ther by tak­ing cues from today’s fash­ion world and mash­ing this with vin­tage bridal trends. Cur­rent fash­ion is all all about colour clash­ing and lots of candy brights — take her­itage fash­ion brands’ Vivi­enne West­wood and Bet­sey Johnson’s recent cat­walks for exam­ple, where they were seen clash­ing cloth­ing and make-up colours. Make-up brands have also been launch­ing their new bright colour collections.

“The rich bright candy make-up colours I used for this shoot worked so well with the over­all theme and it worked because every ele­ment to the day had been care­fully thought through, from how Styal Lodge had been dec­o­rated — with pops of colour every­where, brightly coloured flow­ers, vin­tage crock­ery, colour­ful chi­nese lanterns, bright pink shoes and hair acces­sories. I lay­ered and clashed eye, lip and nail colours — bright oranges, pinks and greens to work and clash with all of these things, using prod­ucts from MAC and their Quite Cute range , Topshop’s new lip­sticks and gor­geous Illa­masqua brights.

Emma con­tin­ues, “Brides these days are want­ing to be much more indi­vid­ual and get much more out of their wed­ding day, and their over­all theme and look has never been so impor­tant. They are ask­ing much more of their sup­pli­ers to cre­ate a spe­cific look. Their pho­tog­ra­phy at the end of it all is like their very own fash­ion shoot! This just shows that when all ele­ments of their plan­ning is com­bined it is pos­si­ble to achieve a fab­u­lous look like this.”

The Future of Vin­tage shoot takes in the sur­round­ings of Styal Lodge, which is an impres­sively ver­sa­tile wed­ding venue: recently dreamed up, designed and built in the Cheshire coun­try­side, and owned by the Higham fam­ily it’s a unique venue for a lux­ury wedding.

Inside Styal Lodge wed­ding venue

The gar­den at Styal Lodge

The ideal shoes for The Future of Vin­tage? Poppy says “Vivi­enne West­wood!” Clas­sic vin­tage brides are wear­ing white and ivory Jimmy Choos… but bright young things can find inspi­ra­tion from bright, poppy colours at Vivi­enne Westwood.

The gar­den at Styal Lodge is young and promises a fab­u­lous dis­play of flow­ers this sum­mer. Because the venue was cre­ated espe­cially for wed­dings, the lay­out is designed for you to get great wed­ding pho­tos and for your guests to have a fan­tas­tic space to relax — com­plete with out­door fur­ni­ture as shown here!

The famous plat­form! (My favourite bit)

I’ve been fol­low­ing the blog of Styal Lodge since last year, and watch­ing progress as they build a plat­form for brides and grooms, “a secret spot to whisk the wed­ding cou­ple away to” which over­looks the water. When I vis­ited the lodge ear­lier in spring, there was a heron in the reeds — now that’s when you know you’re really in the heart of the Cheshire coun­try­side.

 

Every­thing comes together to cre­ate a bril­liant, cre­ative and quirky wed­ding look. The cute and unusual Char­lotte Bal­bier wed­ding gown, funky pink shoes, and all those fan­tas­tic, colour­ful dec­o­ra­tions and acces­sories. Even the ray-bans just add to the fun atmos­phere of The Future of Vin­tage wed­ding shoot!

Huge thanks to every­one involved in The Future of Vin­tage shoot:

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Jonny Draper
The girls at Styal Lodge: Georgina, Sarah, and model Poppy Higham
Wed­ding dress designer Char­lotte Bal­bier
The White Closet bridal bou­tique
Emma Draper make up artist
Model Stacey McKen­zie
And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon — colour­ful cup­cakes
Pink Pep­per cater­ing
Spe­cial Days Events