Styling a Vintage Wedding

If you are planning a vintage wedding it is important that you get the styling right in order to create a beautiful vintage look.

Table arrangement and flowers for a vintage wedding

I absolutely love my job when it comes to styling and making the tables look breathtakingly pretty. Starting with the tablecloth, it is best to have a plain white cloth to the ground or to the knees, which is a blank canvas on which to adorn and decorate. Sometimes it is rather fun to have smaller vintage tablecloths, embroidered linen place mats or runners which have been beautifully embellished or perhaps have lace edging (this beautiful and intricate work was done in the 30s and 40s by wives and mothers during the long evenings before television was in everyone’s home).

For the table centres I absolutely love the Victorian glass cake stands in 2 tiers, with a 3rd tier of a glass vase and a very loose arrangement of garden flowers and foliage, the kind you don’t often find at the market; lovely full and open old roses, sweet peas, antirrhinums, cornflowers and sage leaves in bluey green hues. This gives a very romantic vintage flair to your tables. On each table, around the centrepiece, it’s also rather lovely to have about 4 little vases, quite small, which can be old fashioned shot glasses, delicate sherry glasses, or even little coffee cups; in fact any small vintage vessel will do to hold a small posy or a singular bloom. Then you can set the table with the vintage china and vintage pastel coloured linen napkins at each place setting, and there you have it, the individual look is complete. Your guests will be so impressed they will remember your wedding as the one that stood out among many that summer!

The little details to bring your vintage wedding together

It is so important to arrange the vintage china on the tables in a stylish way, otherwise I’m sorry to say it can all too easily end up looking like a bit of a jumble sale and that is not the look you want. What you do want is elegance, so bring some height to the table centre (I don’t think it matters if your view of the person opposite is blocked, I believe it’s better to have a sensational table display) and make sure you are confident in your art of placement, otherwise get a stylist in.

Vintage style wedding cakes

Your wedding cake is a very important part of your reception and you can bet that all your girlie friends and relations will walk over to your cake table and scrutinise every inch of it. Therefore you must choose a cake which reflects both of you and your styles. A vintage look to your cake can really compliment the theme and there are many designs to choose from. There are retro candy 1950’s cakes with polka dots and sugar ribbons, to the more romantic Edwardian style with iced piping swags, handmade roses and many tiers. There are few brides who would like to choose a rich dark fruit cake with hard royal icing nowadays, so it’s just as well there are lots of flavours to choose from and many different ways to decorate the cake.

Article by Amanda Baird of The Utterly Sexy Café

Image Courtesy of The Utterly Sexy Café

Read more Vintage Wedding Advice articles

Read other Wedding Advice articles