Vintage wedding dress hunting: Clerkenwell vintage fair

I cut my Sunday morning lie-in short today and peddled down to Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair - a newcomer on the London vintage fair calendar, and not as big as the likes of Hammersmith and Battersea - which makes it all the more appealing if you’re feeling a bit bleary eyed!

It’s a good place to start if you’re looking for initial wedding or bridesmaid dress ideas or for hunting down old lace, textiles, jewellery or divine pillbox hats with net trims. Pieces range from 1800s to the 80s and are well-priced compared with buying in the shops (it also has a tea room and handy alterations booth.)

A Vintage Wedding's stand

Elaine Bernstein's stand

A few stands caught my eye: A Vintage Wedding had a range of frou-frou net and lace bridal dresses, while I loved the adorable bridesmaid dress at Elaine Bernstein’s stand. I couldn’t resist going a bit snap-happy at Fola Solanke’s beautifully styled stall (she’s a Friday regular at Portobello) – honeymoon inspiration perhaps? I just need to track down the perfect 1950s swimsuit…

Fola Solanke's stand

Readers’ Vintage Weddings: Amy and John

Amy and John's day is a true inspiration for all those planning a homemade wedding. Accomplished in a matter of months with the minimum of fuss and without a Bridezilla moment in sight, she planned the perfect vintage-themed wedding. Here’s the low-down:

Where: The ceremony took place in awe-inspiring Southwark Cathedral (with a crowd of Borough Market onlookers outside), followed by a sunny walk (following hand-drawn "walk of love" maps by Amy’s sister Sally) along the Thames to the faded grandeur, paint peeling walls and fairy lights of Wiltons Music Hall – London’s oldest surviving music hall.

The look: 50s-style dresses for the bride (http://www.dollycouture.com/) and floral ones for the bridesmaids, her favourite pink shoes, an ice-cream van and jam jars filled with peonies and pink roses, bought during a dawn visit to New Covent Garden flower market a couple of days before.

A bridesmaid in Vivien of Holloway

Homemade things: Amy says: “I sewed the table runners and bunting using cheap fabric from Abakhans in Manchester; I made the flower girl dress from an extra metre of fabric I bought from Vivien of Holloway; The favours were handmade by us and my sister Sally - little brown envelopes stamped with vintage stamps from etsy, filled with homemade badges made by my sis, special poems written by John and my favourite baking recipes”. Amy, we salute you!

Amy’s tips: “When I was looking for a new 50s style dress, I would have loved one from somewhere like Candy Anthony but they were too pricey. America has lots of companies that create more affordable vintage-style dresses... It was a bit of a risk as I was worried that it wouldn't fit, but the dress was perfect. And a fraction of the cost of anything similar in the UK.”

A "Walk of Love" map by Sally Leach

Wiltons Music Hall

Inside Wiltons

A Vintage Wedding Evening

I was excited to hear that the fabulous London vintage boutique My Sugarland is planning a Vintage Wedding Evening on the evening of March 3 – sounds like a fantastic idea!

For those of you who don’t know the shop (pictured below), it’s a beautiful space in Angel run by stylist Zoe Lem, who carefully selects vintage dresses alongside contemporary brands. I love the jewellery and hair accessories in there too (future blog post in waiting!).

Zoe herself will host the event, showing off some of the store’s selection of wedding dresses, as well as offering advice on planning for the big day, including ideas for photography, flowers and make-up. Tickets cost £10 – email info@mysugarland.co.uk to book. And if you can’t make the March date, there’s another evening planned for May.

Vintage wedding dress hunting: The V&A archive

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London is one of my favourite places for fashion and design inspiration - and I recently discovered that, although they don't shout about it, anyone - yes, anyone! - can arrange a private appointment to view their incredible archive of wedding dresses - including painstakingly preserved Edwardian and Victorian era dresses, 20s flapper styles, right up to 80s meringues. Well, obviously I couldn't resist, and it actually proved a fascinating first step in finding the perfect dress.

So Mum and I made an appointment and hot footed it down to South Ken, where the lovely Edwina (in charge of preserving and cataloguing the thousands of dresses in the museum's collection) led us down corridor after corridor, until we reached an unassuming door that opened to reveal a gleaming white room filled with what looked like giant fridges - all filled with dresses! (You can also arrange to see non-wedding dresses, such as their near perfect Dior collection of 50s New Look styles.)

Dresses were laid out for us and we donned lab coats and gloves to inspect more closely. Each dress came with its own fascinating story, such as the 1940s wartime bride who made her own dress out of curtain material due to rationing - and it still looked beautiful.

The V&A is also planning a Wedding Dress exhibition for 2013, and it is asking members of the public to upload their own photos of unusual dresses onto the museum's website - the results are a great source of inspiration for vintage dress hunters.

Below are some of my photos from our day in the "lab" - I particularly love the 20s "fairy" dress, and the beautifully embroidered cuffs and covered buttons on the demure 1940s shapes.