Vintage wedding dresses: Ooh La La! Vintage

Vintage clothing specialist Ooh La! La! Vintage (run by the exquisitely stylish Tara Munro) was one of my first ports of call on the wedding dress hunt.

Based in Paris, Tara can source one-off vintage dresses and accessories for you, or you can book an appointment with her London counterpart Annie, who can help you create a made-to-measure vintage-style dress or alter an existing vintage piece from her stock of dresses (shown below).

Tara also runs vintage weekends and events where she hosts a vintage masterclass and dressing-up session (accompanied by champagne, afternoon tea and Edith Piaf), followed by a tour of the best Parisian vintage haunts in her charming Citroën 2CV, and finished off with a night out at the Moulin Rouge. Sounds like a fabulous vintage-themed hen do idea!

 

 

An invitation idea

I loved the pretty invites sent out by London's most inspiring department store Liberty for the launch of its collaboration with gorgeous French concept store Merci - a simple piece of cardboard with words stamped out to reveal Liberty floral fabric sewn on to the back. Could make a beautiful wedding invitation – if you had the money to commission – or energy to create them yourself, that is!

A flea market find

My good friend Cesca (another seasoned vintage hunter) was planning a trip to Paris and offered to look out for some French fabric to decorate the tables at my wedding. She came back with this gorgeous faded floral table cloth from the Montreuil flea market - so beautifully tied up in a ribbon, I can't bring myself to unwrap it! If you're prepared for the rummage, I would recommend spending a morning at this sprawling market towards the east of the city. Those with the patience to sift through piles of old jumble sale clutter are (almost) guaranteed to find a bargain.

So the tablecloth hunt is already well underway (the more mismatched, the better of course). Below are a few hand-embroidered ones - shockingly - abandoned in charity shops... well now they've found a good home.