1950's inspired wedding shoot – straight from the past, into my camera…

This all started about 4 months ago—

So, you know Mr. Vintage here, i’m always hunting the internet, tag sales, eBay, Brimfield—wherever, for vintage stuff (especially wedding stuff) which I have come to find is often difficult to locate. The thought first came to me after scanning some old slides from my parents wedding and seeing my moms dress and flowers:

Many times at REAL weddings there are elements that are vintage, but let’s face it – nobody is going ALL OUT 1950’s these days.

The thought pops into my head: HEY! Why don’t I try and shoot my OWN vintage wedding. So I started reaching out to some of my industry pals, starting with Miss D.D. Nickel. She and I had done a vintage makeup shoot a number of months back, so I knew she was REALLY into this kind of stuff. We chatted about the idea and met one day in New Haven CT at Fashionista, where she had gotten many of the outfits for our previous shoot.

I arrived a few minutes late (typical…), and without D.D. seeing my moms old dress, she had pulled a few for me to check out. I walked in, looked at them and pointed to one and said “THAT’S the dress!!” To me, it was about as exact a replica of my moms dress as I could have hoped for. But I had my doubts it would fit our model Kirsty…

Kirsty arrived a few minutes later, tried on ‘dress #1’ and lo-and-behold: it FIT!!! Not wanting to chance it disappearing, I bought it rather than renting it (so now I own a dress if you need one…)

I’ll spare you all the details of planing the day (which included a call from the New Haven police while I was in Mississippi, as I apparently REALLY scared an 85 year old woman by putting a letter in her mailbox telling her how much I wanted to use her house to shoot in front of — that’s a whole other tale…)

Let’s just say, that it was amazing to see it all come together the way it did. I had plotted out the shots in my head for so many months that I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted when we actually started shooting!

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Nichole Michel of Coral Pheasant Stationary whipped together this beautiful wedding invite just a few days before the shoot (my fault for thinking of it last minute, and kudos to her for doing it so quickly!!)

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OK.

The Car.

Lets talk about The Car.

Tom Guinta of Trumbull CT is friends with our model Kirsty’s friend Elisabeth , (confusing, I know) and he just HAPPENED to have this gorgeous, Mercury Montclair aqua piece of heaven that he parked in my driveway. Amazingly, he has done very little cosmetic work to it and it only about 8,000 miles on it!!

I think I could have photographed it all day long….

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a relaxing cocktail for our bride..

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Robin Dini was on hand as well, and grabbed this really cool angle–

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Diane Gaudett did an incredible job with the flowers, doing 2 different bouquets– she did one that was more ‘authentic’ for the period (the daises which were very popular) and the larger ones you’ll see below which mimicked Jackie O’s wedding bouquet! (…we joked when we added them to the photo that her wedding budget had just jumped up a few notches)

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And last but hardly least, Mr Jim Alteri of Vintage Cinema came by to capture the behind the scenes in his very individual style which — come ON now — fits what we did like a glove!!!!

[a true ‘vision of loveliness ‘ at about 2:15…]

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thanks again for everyone for their time and effort and my pals Mike and Jen of Ikes Atomic Photobooth for letting me take over their driveway!