It is (as ever) expensive to have the bridal party’s hair professionally done, but you may think it is well worth it – especially if you want something particularly intricately styled rather than just loose and curly. I would say that you need to start looking for a hair stylist a long way before the wedding, as the get booked up, and it does take a long time to go for consultations at a number of salons. Most offer a free “consultation”, which is essentially a chat about prices and styles. For an actual hair trail it costs around £50 and they will in general only do one style as this will take about an hour, with some modifications on it if you want to adjust one or two things about the style. For a complete restyle it will cost even more! I do recommend going in for a chat though – it is nice to see the salon just to get an idea of what it is like before going any further. As the actual hair trial it will cost money you want to narrow your choice down as much as possible first.

My mistake was not switching hairdresser after the first trial where I was not 100% (or even 70%) happy. If they cannot create the kind of thing you are after it is probably best to go somewhere else than keep paying out for trials at the same place. I did not like the way they did the curls (with GHD hair irons, which just fell out of my hair in an hour) and when I went back for a trial at the same place with Velcro rollers this was even worse on my hair. What I have since discovered I needed was *heated* rollers – the type they warm up before putting in your hair. They will provide curls that last far longer, and can still look quite loose and natural if this is what you are after (rather than tiny corkscrew curls). Well I didn’t know that at the time, and as I was not getting married in my home town I did not have time to keep going back and forwards looking for a new stylist by then. But really, a good stylist should know (and be able to use) the technology you need for the style you want. I said I wanted longer lasting curls than with GHD, and the stylist never even suggested heated rollers. Maybe she didn’t have any? So leave yourself plenty of time, and if you aren’t happy wit the first trial don’t waste your time unless you are really confident in the stylist’s ability such that is worth the time (and money) in investigating other options with them.

One thing that was useful is that once I leaned from the stylist how to do GHD curls I was able to practice some styles for the bridesmaids on my sister, and this helped save time needed with the stylist. Here are my efforts:

curly!

with hair facinator

view of side/from behind

But all in all it was a wonderful day and you should never get hung up on these things, just something to save up as a little tip to give to any future brides who might ask your advice.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats

Top tip – if you are the bride and are making a speech it doesn’t have to be funny. You are not the best man, and as most of us are not funny out of a conversational/social context, it is a relief that this will not be expected of you! Say something from the heart, do plan it as inspiration will not come in the moment, don’t be repetitive, and once again, do plan it in advance. If only I had followed my own advice.

Neither of my bridesmaids were married (my little sisters!) and both were studying and did not really have any time to help with any of the wedding preparations. Luckily for me I have a very helpful and competent mother. What I would say is that if you are having a hen night it is nice if someone else can organize it for you. I had to organize my own and it was a lot of effort when I was already very over-stretched and tired, so if you can try and get someone else to help out, even if they aren’t a bridesmaid.

My bridesmaids looked the part though, so no complaints

The Lovely Ladies

And lastly, my personal preference is definitely to go to high street stores for the bridesmaids’ dresses. For the same price you can get something far more flatteringly styled than at a bridal shop, and something that the bridesmaids will actually enjoy wearing. Not even your best friends or siblings should have look like a frump or a meringue for you!

someone doesn't like her friends...

This website is perhaps not the most romantic in style, but it was perfect for us. I had a friend who had a lovely ring from Ernest Jones that I liked, and I wanted something like it – but not at Ernest Jones prices. The ring I had in mind was this one I think:

Ernest Jones 18ct white gold wedding band

And I got my perfect ring (and Jason’s) at Wedding Rings Direct at a cheaper price. A theme with me, I love the fact that you can customize all the variables and get exactly the ring you want. You can pick the style, metal, finish, engraving etc. It is also very helpful to see diagrams of all the different styles of ring. I recommend court rings for style, and they are also very comfortable to wear. D rings can be a bit sharp at the edges before a few years of marriage softens things up! I also loved how this website had infinitely more selection than high street stores. The prices are also very reasonable and a lot cheaper than high street stores for the same weight of gold.

Here is my ring, at only £151.79 compared to £225 at Ernest Jones for essentially the same thing:

18ct white gold wedding band from Wedding Rings Direct

I would recommend visiting your local jewelers, or H Samuel-esque type place to have your ring size checked. Although the website will send you a ring sizing thing it is essentially an adjustable plastic ring and is not a good way of getting your size right. Your wedding ring needs to be comfortable, but quite tight since you don’t want it to slip – and don’t forget your hands get a lot smaller when they are cold.

Wedding Rings Direct are also very helpful friendly people. When my ring arrived it was a little tight, so I sent it back and got ½ a size bigger, and the only cost was postage. They are happy to refund or exchange, which is very useful when buying online. They also have great pictures and diagrams on this site, and you can see a visualization of exactly what the ring would look like as you change different variables. I had looked at some Ebay shops and rings for sale before finding WRD, and I would not risk buying anything simply because you cannot tell what on earth you will be getting from those grainy pictures! Plus I found sellers did not know the proper terms for what they were selling or what style of cut it was (i.e. court, D-shape etc). Although as ever, there are lots of creative ways of going about anything, whether your goal is originality or keeping to a tight budget. The most creative thing I have heard of is a couple that made their own wedding rings out of shopping trolley wire – now that is pretty imaginiative, and I hear it was a very special thing for them to make their own rings.

will you marry me?

Close-up of the bugle beads

I got mine here: www.theweddingveilshop.co.uk
I like how you can pick all sorts of variants and get exactly what you want. BUT DO GET THE FABRIC SAMPLES FIRST! http://www.theweddingveilshop.co.uk/id86.html
I didn’t and I ended up getting the wrong shade and having to buy another one. The samples are free (£1.50 postage no matter how many you order) so this is really a good idea.

When choosing a veil perhaps bare in mind how glittery your dress is. If you dress has a lot of iridescent beads then you will probably want a plain veil. Although my favorite motto is “more is more” (since clearly less is not in fact more), sometimes this is just not the case. The veil I went for is here: http://www.theweddingveilshop.co.uk/id61.html

I made my own cravats since we wanted burnt orange and the hire shop didn’t have this colour (cravats etc come with the whole hire deal), and I bought the fabric from the Bakers Arms in Walthamstow (the run of shops between the Bakers Arms and Walthamstow Central, just outside the Walthamstow Village area – they sell all the fabrics you could dream of there!) and got a sewing pattern from Burda online. However sometime after the wedding I realized I could have just bought white cravats and dyed them. Somehow this didn’t occur to me at the time, and making six cravats took quite a while. Also the fabric I used was quite slippery, which was not 100% ideal, although no major problem.

If your wedding is more modern you may want to invest in a nice suit, but then you have the dilemma whether or not all your best men and the rest of the bridal party will have to buy the same suit, or whether it is ok as long as they are all in suits of a similar shade. As with anything a lot of what you go for will come down to the type of venue you are getting married in.

Fruity Flowers - some inspiration

See the great thing about Christians is they love to help someone getting married! A very kind and creative friend of my family offered to do our wedding flowers, so our cost was just the price of flowers from the lovely Spitalfields market in London. My multi-talented, fireman-by-day(!), cousin made my bouquet. Bare in mind the market is open very early in the morning, and you will have to be flexible as what you will end up with will depend in part on what is in season and in stock on the day you go to buy the flowers. As for the wedding dress, I made a scrap book of ideas and this was helpful. What I would say is I probably could have been a little less overbearing about this, and overprotective of what I wanted. I am not a professional, it is nothing like choosing a dress, so sometimes it is best to leave it to the person who knows what’s what.

The Bride's bouquet, the bridesmaid's posy, and a buttonhole

All I can say is when I walked into the reception I was really stunned with what they had done with it. I loved it and it goes to show that sometimes you should just trust people!

The reception hall

Table 5!

The top table

But again, tips. Flowers are very expensive if you use a professional (I see a theme here re: weddings, and things being expensive…) so of course, set a budget, and try to stick to it. Bear in mind that wherever you go over-budget you will have to cut back somewhere else.

Depending on the venue you may not even need flowers other than for the corsages, buttonholes, bridal and bridesmaids bouquets at the chapel/church. If it is a building with a lot of charm it may not need much adding. But modern buildings might be different, who knows. Probably for the reception you might need flowers?

I am sure you can google better advice than I can give you so I think that is all I have to say, other than the fact that I think that feathery kind of fern stuff is lovely.

Cuttings

Wedding dresses. I saw recommended in a wedding magazine that it can be a good idea to take cuttings from magazines of dresses you like, or dresses with features, fabrics, or cuts that you like, even if you don’t like the dress as a whole, to help you and staff at wedding dress shops build up a picture of what you are looking for.

Well I did so, and as well as being quite fun (I was the kind of child that did scrapbooks so it was my kind of thing, I made really pretty collages for every page!), when I had put together my book of ideas it helped me realize that the kind of dress I actually wanted was different to what I had initially thought of. My first idea had been this –

Evanescence, The Open Door

which is from the cover of an Evanescence album. I had thought I wanted something quite long, dramatic, and a little gothic, and corseted. In fact what I wanted was something vintage looking, fairy-like, and a little kooky, but also as the scale goes, on the end of traditional.

A little too kooky for me

Also modest! That was a factor for me. And by doing my scrap book I picked out the kind of features that led me in the direction I went. Now to tell the truth I am not sure if the scrapbook made any difference at all, when I tried on the dress I ended up having I just *knew* it was the right one. People say when you find the right dress you will know, and after a couple of unsuccessful trips to wedding dress shops where I didn’t like a single dress I tried on, I didn’t think that theory was true. And then when I found the dress, it was love at first sight! So there you go, but I am sure other people have different experiences. But what I will say is that it combined the features I had identified and probably helped me feel confident of my taste and the look that appealed to me. Plus it was nice to look back on the pictures and see how closely it worked out. Here are some photos of my dress – it is Persia by Stephanie Allin, from the Gower Collection. My dress is in a more antique shade than these images (a shade I shall refer to as antique ivory)

Persia - front view

Persia - side view

On my wedding day

Where to buy? Once-worn dresses

So, let’s get on with this. Firstly I initially tried to buy a “once worn”, or as the more mushy types put it “pre-loved” wedding dress, so I could get something lovely at an affordable price. I had before then tried high street bridal shops, but hadn’t found anything there that I liked. The main website I found for once-worn dresses in the uk was www.thedressmarket.net

This website is ok. And to be honest, the other once-worn sites out there are awful. Really terrible search functions, poor and shoddy design, terrible photos. The Dress Market seemed to far outstrip the competition, whilst not being that great itself. The only problem is that generally I would say it is a must to try a dress before you buy it, and a lot of the sellers will not live near you. Also, there may not be that much selection in your size and taste – but if you find something you like you will get a designer dress at a snip of the price. Sadly for me nothing came up in my size that I liked, and that wasn’t on the Isle of Skye or some such. I eventually found my dress at a specific independent bridal shop selling once-worn designer dresses. I saw the advert in the back of a bridal magazine, which was probably the most useful thing I ever found in these magazines. I would say the dresses at this shop retail at around ½ the original cost or less. However be warned that even so you are looking at around £700 as a bare minimum, more like £1000. My other top tip is unless you bag a bargain in a sale or some such, wedding dresses are very expensive in general. My original budget was £300, which crept up very rapidly as soon as I started looking! I actually spent £1000, but the dress was far far cheaper than the original designer price, plus since mine was a designer sample dress (i.e. intended for a catwalk show) which was never in fact worn or modified, I can now sell it on and get back money that I spent on it. Still in the process of doing so however…

I won’t recommend the shop I went to here, email me if you are interested to know. I would say that although the dresses were lovely, the seller was a bit weird, and not very friendly, and see the post below re: the tiara fiasco, when she messed up with the tiara I was scared to complain about this and refuse to pay the postage to send the wrong one back (it cost me £15 for her incompetence!) in case she decided to lose my wedding dress too… So not for the faint-hearted. But if you can put up with poor customer service you can get a designer dress at an affordable price.

What cut?

From left to right: A-line/Princess; Empire; Column; Fish-tail/Mermaid; Ball Gown (source linked from image)

Apparently there are five styles of wedding dress: Column, A-line/Princess, Empire, Ball Gown and Mermaid/Fishtail. The first time I went to a wedding shop they explained this to me, and it is useful to know although not essential, since girls tend to know what kind of cut they want without knowing all the fancy names. I won’t waffle on about this now, since I found a blog that will do so a lot better than me: http://chicgown.blogspot.com/
And here is the article on the five styles: http://chicgown.blogspot.com/2009/06/dress-styles.html

They have some other useful information here too. But at the end of the day I think you can go a bit overboard on advice. So in conclusion, try a lot of dresses on and keep looking until you find one you feel really happy with. It is important to feel confident on your wedding day, since there are a lot of people staring at you. But be careful about budget, you will probably find that wedding dresses are very expensive, and you want to budget reasonably. But there are lots of options – if you know a good tailor and feel confident to decide on a style of dress that will flatter you without trying said dress on (since you won’t be able to do so until they have made it for you!) this could be cheaper, I don’t know since I never got far with looking into this option. Depending on the tailor it could also be far more expensive! Once worn is an option, also ebay (though you can’t try on first, which is why I didn’t consider this). I know friends that have found lovely dresses in charity shops, so find out if there are any near you that specifically sell wedding dresses – as there are some around. Also department stores, and department store sales can also be great for bargains. And of course, you could borrow a dress from a friend – but bare in mind you normally have to alter a wedding dress to get a proper fit, so if the friend wants to keep their dress it depends how they feel about you doing so.

Lastly, you can sell your wedding dress on afterwards. Gumtree is actually quite good for selling, and cheaper than once-worn sites where you have to pay a fee. This is the option I went for, so any takes let me know! But don’t forget you will need to get it professionally dry-cleaned by a wedding dress specialist first.

Ha, so much for this being a “short” post.

Truth be told it was somewhat of a horror story that lead me to be so specific regarding what kind of tiara I wanted…

I purchased my dress from a lady who sells once worn, and sample, designer wedding dresses. I  was very lucky as mine was a never worn designer sample that had not been used for a show. At the time I tried on some tiaras (she also sold on once-worn tiaras) and I had liked two of them especially. I called the seller about a week later to ask she reserve one of the tiaras for me, and I was very specific about which one it was, and I even asked her to email me a photo so I could be sure she had the right one, but she said she didn’t know how to. But I wasn’t worried, as she didn’t have any others at all like it at the time I had been there, so I paid for it and she held it for me. A couple of months later I asked her to post it to me for a hair trial – and when it arrived it was a completely different tiara! I was gutted, and when I rang the seller, she denied it was the wrong one. I was incredulous! I even drew her a diagram on paint, and sent her photos of the one she had posted to illustrate how different they were. Well sadly she had long sold my tiara (and my law degree informs me enough to tell me that as she sold my property (since I had paid for it I was the owner) she should have replaced it), and then still made me pay the postage for the wrong one she sent! I would have argued it but my mother was worried something bad might happen to my wedding dress if I did…

So having had my heart set on this very antique looking tiara, I decided I wanted something vintage. No joke, this was the one I wanted

But as this is the one designed by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria’s wedding day I was going to have to come up with a plan C…

And after hours of trawling websites I bought one here  http://www.headpieceheaven.com/SomethingOld.html

At the moment the ones they have up are not so great, it is a bit hit and miss, but sometimes they have some lovely ones. I got a “something old” tiara – they take a vintage piece of jewellery such as a brooch, bracelet or earring, and work it into a tiara as a centre piece. Mine has a vintage earring in the centre.

But guess what, there had been an error on the website, and the one I had bought had already been sold! Again! But they were very lovely and they made me one to order with a different vintage earring piece in the middle, but otherwise the same as the one I had first bought, and all within a week.

And here are some pictures -

However on my travels around the internet I also found some rather nice websites selling vintage style tiaras. Some of these websites are a little expensive, but as you can spend £50 on something monstrous, you may think  that it is worth it. And if like me you plan to sell your dress after the wedding, it is nice to have something special to keep.

Some recommended websites:

Halo & C0

Halo & Co – a range of tiaras, some particularly vintage looking. The original tiara I had bought from my dress seller (at a snip of the price) was from here. However most of them cost an absolute fortune so maybe more a website for ideas.

Flo & Percy

Flo & Percy – these tiaras are so lovely, and prices tend to be infinitely cheaper than Halo & Co, although still expensive. I would probably have bought one here myself, but they tend to have a limited selection so it is a bit random whether or not they will have quite what you are looking for. They sell both “vintage inspired” tiaras, and tiaras made of original vintage jewellery – the latter all being one-off-a-kind pieces. And if you are really splashing out they also have a bespoke service. They have several “head band” style tiaras, such as the one in the picture, which is a very 1920s look. They also sell some original vintage jewellery.

Magpie Vintage

Magpie Vintage – from what I can tell, this designer takes vintage pieces and turns them into “vintage head dresses”. In the main these are all headband style tiaras, and are more expensive (and less nice in my opinion) than the Flo & Percy tiaras. However some nice pieces and rather more colourful that you generally find elsewhere.

Butler & Wilson

Butler & Wilson – this rather trendy website sells replica vintage aimed at a younger generation of shoppers. The website sells a lot of fun and jazzy items of all kinds, but also has a wedding section with a few nice headpieces, at the cheapest prices of the websites featured in this list. Hot tip – I would steer clear of the “crystal skull tiara”, but I thought this one here was rather nice. They also have a rainbow coloured tiara – certainly not for the understated look.

Bulter & Wilson - Multi-Coloured

Headpiece Heaven

And last but not least Headpiece Heaven – something old, and something new, as well as bespoke items. To be honest the website is pretty ratty, but if you keep an eye out they have some lovely items from time to time, especially in their “something old” range of tiaras made from vintage jewellery pieces. However some of the tiaras are just plain kooky. And unlike the other websites, they will happily change the piece from a headband attachment to a comb for you, maybe even for free!

Headpiece Heaven - kooky?

Good luck everyone!