Inspiration For Creating More Sustainable & Authentic Weddings

Our aim was to create a shoot to showcase bridal / bridesmaid style which is:

Authentic (i.e. suited the !Bride"s" personality / persona e.g. ‘the woman wearing the dress, not the dress wearing the woman’)
Sustainable (i.e. a dress you could wear again and again, shoes the models already had, ribbons made from recycled fabric, seasonal blooms in naturally occurring colours (not dyed/preserved) that can be grown at home in the UK
Complementary (not !cookie-cutter") - models in complementary fabrics and colours with florals which married well with each other without being too !matchy-matchy"

Authenticity

We flipped the traditional bridal styling model on its head and made the shoot PEOPLE and PLACE-centric. This wasn"t about pushing any one collaborator"s ideals about what was !trendy" or aesthetically pleasing to them. We chose our perfect wedding venue and made a decision to showcase three looks; each dis-tinctly diﬀerent but subtly so, and we worked out from there, outlining a persona for each look and creating the styling around that. It was important to think about what each model"s alter-ego would feel fabulous wearing !in real life". To help the creative team diﬀerentiate between the three looks, during the planning stages we lovingly referred to our chosen models as !Earthy Bride! ,"Rainbow Bride" and !Classic Bride" - broad terms to describe the looks they"d be wearing. The girls even responded to their alter-ego"s name on shoot day which gave us all a laugh!

This shoot was about being true, not trendy. It was about inspiring our audience to go against the grain when it comes to wedding styling - to show that it is OK to not conform to a set norm; that it is in fact a really sensible thing to have the PEOPLE and PLACES the couple has so carefully selected to be part of their wedding, at the forefront of their wedding styling decisions.

With the myriad of wedding dress designers out there today and the subsequent thousands of dress styles to choose from, it can feel really overwhelming when it comes to choosing a dress for the Bride and/or Bridesmaids. Shoot collaborator, Louise, recalls the day she said !yes" to her dream dress only to find herself later fretting about whether it was really !trendy enough" to wear on her wedding day - a fear felt by so many couples today. We wanted to show through our styled shoot that there is so much joy in choosing the dress, hair, make-up and flowers that make you feel amazing - that make you feel like YOU - and it shouldn"t matter how much the dress cost, or where you purchased it from, or that you didn"t have that !so-on-trend" bleached palm leaf in your bouquet. It"s become a bit of a cliche thing to say but this shoot was very much YOU DO YOU! We wanted to show that a wedding day is about people, not products at the end of the day and that if you focus on the parts of your wedding that !breathe" (both physically and metaphoric- ally) i.e. your wedding venue/location and the people wearing the styling, and let that lead, then what you will end up with is wedding styling that just flows; nothing will look or feel out of place, and everything will exude authenticity, and there is something really beautiful about that.

Sustainability

Our inspiration for this shoot initially came from a visit to a historic wedding venue that was making headlines locally for its eﬀorts to become more sustainable; something that each member of the creative team is also passionate about.

Belle Isle is said to be the first castle in Ireland to !go green". The 470-acre estate is a designated area of Special Scientific Interest, with the estate and working farm dedicated to protecting and preserving some of Fermanagh"s most unique natural heritage. In 2006 they installed a biomass boiler which not only boosted its eco credentials, but reduced its carbon impact by 68 tonnes per year and saves an im- pressive £6,000 in yearly fuel costs. Belle Isle also boasts an award-winning cook- ery school which practices a !slow food" ethos linking exquisite food with a com-mitment to the community and environment. It was this focus on doing things slowly and thoughtfully, with special care given to the community, environment and clientele they serve, that drew us as a creative team to Belle Isle and we were de- lighted when the castle jumped on board with our vision.

We used high-street dresses in complementing styles to show how a eﬀective this can be as a strategy for dressing bridesmaids or indeed for the Bride herself. Go- ing ‘high-street’ can be a great way to have a more sustainable wedding - both in terms of the money you’ll save as a couple, and also (despite first impressions) the impact your wedding fashion will have on the environment. ‘Fast-fashion" gets its bad press (and much of it deserved), but what is truly more sustainable? Choosing a high-street dress that you can wear time and time again or choosing a one-oﬀ designer dress which will be worn only for a few hours?

The ribbons used were Etsy-purchased from @roseslane They were hand-dyed (with the help of some avocados!) and made from torn strips of recycled silk fabric left over from sari-manufacturing in India.

The flowers, although imported from overseas out of necessity, were chosen for their seasonality in the UK and naturally-occurring colours and forms - a mix of Aquilegia, Sweet Pea, Celosia, Stocks, Peonies, Roses, Ranunculus and the well- known herb, Thyme. We wanted to demonstrate through the florals, like every oth- er element of the styling in the shoot, that by choosing flowers that are timelessly beautiful, you’ll not run the risk of looking back in years to come and saying ‘what was I thinking?’. Trends are fleeting, Mother Nature is not. Let her lead and you won’t go too far wrong.

Complementary (not !cookie-cutter")

It was important that the styling complemented not only the model and her per- sona, but our incredible 17th century Irish castle shoot location, Belle Isle, and that each look was distinctly diﬀerent from the one next to it, but that served as the perfect complement to each-other.

For bouquets, we went for one purely Thyme bouquet (who"d have thought a big bunch of herbs would have made for such a stunning bridal bouquet!?), one a heavenly-scented, delicate bouquet of Sweet Pea and Aquilegia and the third, a more dense focal-flower-heavy bouquet with a little bit of everything, including Karl Rosenfield Peonies and Golden Vuvuzela roses!

Hair styling ranged from a textured !half-up-half-down" style with a cluster of flowers in the hair, a glamorous Hollywood-style wave and a true !boho" wave with a thyme and ranunculus floral circlet.

For makeup, each models look was again, unique. The common theme that was considered for the shoot was the ‘less is more’ concept, all three models had gorgeous skin that only required light enhancement. For each look we categorized them by a theme, each theme had a style of makeup that are detailed below.

‘Classic’: Winged eye, matte skin, dark nude lip

This look is inspired by the 1920s being that a winged eye and darker colours on the lips were in style.

‘Earthy’: Soft brown eye, nude lip, fresh, glowy, bronzed skin

This look was based on the theme, being that earthy. We kept everything very simple with this makeup look to allow other aspects of the concept to take the spotlight.

‘Rainbow’: Neutral eyes, rosy cheeks, flushed lips

Blush, blush and more blush. This look was all about the colour, something that we see coming more and more into trends within this year. The colours within the dress and flowers really complimented the tones that were used within the makeup.

We wanted a mix of indoor and outdoor shots which could be obtained in the fields to the back of the castle (where the sheep freely roamed and where the green pastures met the lough shore) and within the upstairs bedrooms and ground-floor castle drawing room. It was crucial that our colour-scheme comprised of colours to perfectly complement both the interior rooms of the castle as well as the natural landscape outside. It was our goal to choose styling that would en- hance not seek to change or overpower the castle backdrop and we think we achieved that.

The Virginia Creeper which covers much of the front of the castle building; a lush green in the Summer, turning to a vibrant pinky-red in the autumn and the !French Rose" shade of pink which dominates the colour scheme in the Abercorn Wing drawing room were what set the ball rolling for the colour-scheme. From there we added peaches and creams which were colours that could also be found around the castle, both within and outside of the castle walls, and which brought about a distinct flush of summer.

We didn"t use any !props" because we really felt it"d be !props for the sake of props". The castle and grounds had so much to say, as did each model, and we were happy to let the magnificence of the place and the sass of each model do the talking!

If ever there was a time to scale things back and get right to the heart of what a wedding day is all about, it is now. We hope our shoot will inspire you all to put PEOPLE and PLACES at the centre of you’re wedding styling and to let everything flow out from there. It has been an incredibly tough year for soonly- weds and we hope this shoot will show how easy it is to create a high-end look with just a few key ingredients. You don"t need tonnes of props, matchy-matchy styling and huge extravagance, in fact the looks we’ve created would work as well for a castle wedding as for a wedding or elopement on a cliﬀ-edge or back- garden!