Category Archives: Dresses

wedding dresses

Another treat for Charlotte Balbier brides out there!

I love Char­lotte Bal­bier. She’s one of the most excit­ing wed­ding dress design­ers in the UK right now, and wher­ever I turn I see bril­liant reviews and a real buzz about her 2012 wed­ding dress collection.

Speak­ing of which…
wedding dress blog feature images by Jonny Draper (2)When I blogged the launch of Charlotte’s 2012 Candy Kisses wed­ding dress col­lec­tion last month, it was thanks to lovely Man­ches­ter wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Jonny Draper that we got to see so many gor­geous sneak pre­views of the dresses. Remem­ber — this was a trade launch, so offi­cially (shh­hhh…) no one else has seen them yet!

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A real treat for 2012 brides on English Wedding today!

I don’t squeal. I’m calm, col­lected and sim­ply love being a wed­ding blog­ger. No hys­ter­ics. So when top UK wed­ding dress designer Char­lotte Bal­bier her­self emailed me I didn’t squeal*. At all.

*I jumped four foot in the air and did a quick lap of the ceil­ing in my excitement.

Last month Char­lotte Bal­bier did a sneaky peek pre­view day for her bou­tique own­ers of the new 2012 ‘Candy Kisses’ col­lec­tion at www.greatjohnstreet.co.uk. The event was to give the bou­tiques a pre­view into the new 2012 col­lec­tion and also to have a time to meet fel­low bou­tique own­ers, relax, chat, net­work and be spoilt with cham­pagne, yummy canapés and after­noon tea.

Posted in bridal shoot, daily UK wedding inspiration, Dresses, english weddings, inspiration, Wedding fairs and events, wedding industry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

The Dresses: Me and My Girls

Days Mar­ried: 74

Good news read­ers! I now have the disc of hi-res images from Phil Bar­ber so I can bom­bard you with pho­tos and wed­ding reports! Hurrah!

You may remem­ber in a past post that I was keep­ing secrets about my dress. No more secrets from me — I wore Cabaret by Ian Stu­art. To be hon­est I don’t think the model on the web­site does the dress jus­tice — as I really don’t like it in that photo. How­ever, try­ing the dress on was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story — this dress needs curves!

Posted in Dresses, Star Bride Salma, Star Brides | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Being a Timeless Bride on your wedding day

Choose a wedding dress that will last forever

Choose a wed­ding dress that will last forever

How to be a time­less bride — choos­ing the right dress

How do you choose a wed­ding dress that looks amaz­ing on you and that will stand the test of time? How do you know that you’ll look back through your wed­ding album in twenty or forty years and fall in love with your wed­ding dress all over again?

Look for a dress that loves you as much as you love it!

Look for a dress that loves you as much as you love it!

Posted in Advice, Dresses, english weddings, inspiration, Recommended, wedding suppliers | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

No. 6: A Dress Story

Days to go: 66

Some­times — moth­ers do know best.

I spent hours brows­ing the inter­net for dress ideas and inspi­ra­tion. I spent a lot of time in a bit of a cri­sis — I didn’t like most dresses — and I couldn’t imag­ine myself wear­ing any kind of wed­ding dress. Like, ever.

When I dis­cov­ered the cre­ations of Ian Stu­art, how­ever, I began to believe I could wear a wed­ding dress. (And inter­est­ingly enough, most of his dresses seemed to go very well with my Irreg­u­lar Choice shoes!) I spent yet more hours por­ing over every Ian Stu­art design I could find, over and over again, try­ing to imag­ine myself in each and every dress.

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The London Bridal Designer Sale March 2011

Bridal Designer Sale March 2011

Bridal Designer Sale March 2011

Could this be the sale no bride can afford to miss? Imag­ine you’re queue­ing out­side Next on box­ing day, 5am… it’s cold and you’ve camped overnight and you’re deter­mined to get a bril­liant bar­gain or two. The doors finally open, the crowd surges forward…

… but that’s noth­ing. Imag­ine the same scene, and the excite­ment you’d feel if there were 1000 designer wed­ding dresses on the other side of those doors. The Next sale pales in com­par­i­son to the Bridal Designer Sale doesn’t it!

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No. 2: Being Too Organised and The Bridesmaid Dilemma

Days to go: 78

I chose and pur­chased my shoes for the wed­ding in April 2010 — 19 months before the big day! Now these aren’t a prob­lem because I knew these were the shoes for me (even though one of the brides­maids wanted to bet me £10 that I’d change my mind) — and I knew the dress I was going to choose would match per­fectly (even if it would be in a non-matching but match­ing any­way sense!).

Here are the beau­ties — Irreg­u­lar Choice Corte­san:

Posted in Advice, Dresses, english weddings, Star Bride Salma, Star Brides | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Chic bridal photography

Greg from TP Pho­tog­ra­phy sub­mit­ted some­thing just a lit­tle dif­fer­ent for the Eng­lish Wed­ding blog, and I’d love to know what you think.

This is bridal pho­tog­ra­phy as a col­lab­o­ra­tion between local wed­ding sup­pli­ers: the kind of team­work which builds a close rap­port between sup­pli­ers — and I love that these infor­mal lit­tle teams are dot­ted all around the country.

The shoot involved the fab­u­lous Green House Hotel — an eco-friendly wed­ding venue in Bournemouth, Bridal Designs Wed­ding Jew­ellery and Cloud­light Pho­tog­ra­phy,

Find a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher you love, and you’ll prob­a­bly feel the same about the florists, cake com­pa­nies and sta­tion­ers they rec­om­mend to you as well.

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New wedding dress designs — elegance by Castigliano

I’ve been learn­ing about wed­ding dresses this week, view­ing some beau­ti­ful designs in a top bridal store and find­ing out a lot about trends within the indus­try — what are the design­ers doing — as well as trends for brides — which designs are pop­u­lar for real brides.

More of that later, but for now I’ll share this with you: the lat­est cat­walk show by Car­o­line Cas­tigliano, which was held as part of the brand’s 20th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at The Man­darin Ori­en­tal Hyde Park in Lon­don.

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Green Earth Flowers and Timeless Bride

This morn­ing I set out on my lit­tle scooter for an adven­ture: to meet two Cheshire wed­ding sup­pli­ers I’d heard rave reviews about and fea­tured on the blog although we’d never met in person.

Green Earth Flowers: creative and beautiful wedding flowers in Cheshire, near Manchester

Green Earth Flow­ers: cre­ative and beau­ti­ful wed­ding flow­ers in Cheshire, near Manchester

Laura from Green Earth Flow­ers and Michelle from Time­less Bride have built their wed­ding busi­nesses around their per­son­al­i­ties — both are pas­sion­ate about their work and led by eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples: I learned a lot about being wel­com­ing, hon­est and inspir­ing, from both of these ladies this morn­ing.

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