1940's Style Town Hall Wedding Dress

As an art director of her own gallery, Jessica had a clear vision for the curation for all of three wedding of her wedding dresses and she chose the Bespoke Bridal Design Service.
The first wedding, featured here, was her London ceremony at Chelsea Old Town Hall.

Together, we explored different cuts and details relating to vintage fashion; necklines, sleeve style and cuts, not limited to bridal design.

The final Wedding Dress Design was created in Silk Crepe, a high neck with a deep collar-type band framing the edge, leading to a low back where a soft and romantic bow was tied.
The bodice is form fitting and the seams are cleverly angled creating a v-shape on the body, and this is mirrored on the skirt. It’s a very suble form of visual body contouring.

The skirt was slim, and a high split at the back allowed for movement while keeping the shape, and the length is long for a pencil skirt - to the ankle. I think it works really beautifully.

The sleeves were very carefully crafted to perfection, a slight puff on the shoulder and perfect curved shape, gathered into a deep fitted cuff, fastened with custom silk covered buttons.

Jessica had seen some embroidery I had designed for another bride’s wedding dress, and really wanted to incorporate something similar for her own wedding dress design but to make it her own.
The embroidery was based on muted silver metallic thread, baroque-style motifs, encrusted with a mix of vintage pearls, crystals and silver beads. I also made some beaded flowers using the peyote style of bead weaving.

The beadwork was concentrated around the cuffs and on the front waistband giving a pure luxury feeling to the dress.

The shoes Jessica chose were from the Rainbow Club Wedding shoes collection, a nicely-shaped almost tow court show in ivory satin. I’m not usually one for matching shoes, however the crystal shoe clip Jessica purchased wasn’t quite cutting it, so I embroidered some space motif pieces together with some pearls and crystals and then they were perfect.

After a ceremony at Chelsea Old Town Hall, Jessica and Jules enjoyed a family dinner at home in London.

Photographs by Fine Art Wedding Photographers Barker Evans
Venue Chelsea Old Town Hall
Florals by McQueens Flowers

I think it’s worth mentioning that, little did we know at the start of this journey together that the ceremony and the proceeding ceremony wedding celebration would be drastically altered from the original plans. No thanks to Covid, each and every part seemed uncertain, from the guest list to the date.
We were unable to follow the usual schedule of fittings, and even when we were able to meet and continue, we didn’t know if the ceremony would be able to go ahead or not. We didn’t know if our efforts in thought and hard work would be for nothing, leading to disappointment . . .

Happily the first town hall ceremony was more or less on schedule but with many obscure rules in place.

Planning a wedding is fun, but it can be a lot of pressure making sure your guests are catered for, and adding lots of nice touches for yourself and your family. So I think it should be acknowledged that