Vintage wedding themes have been extremely popular for many years now. Those carry a feeling of DIY and the simplicity of the old times. But under all those beautifully styled photos the modern wedding can be really expensive even if it’s vintage inspired. There’s nothing frugal or budget in them. If we ask the people who came before us, I bet many of them would tell how their money was used to setting up home rather than paying for a big party. How did our grandmas really get married and what can we learn from them? Even if we count in the inflation, most weddings used to be simpler and much cheaper.

The American Wedding dream that’s so well known all over the world was aimed mainly for well payed, white, upper middle class and huge amount of people weren’t in that picture perfect position.

Let’s dig to the bottom and see how our grandmothers and their mothers before them got married and what we living in 21st century can learn from their traditions and how we can adapt the vintage practices into modern time!

In the 19th century weddings were held in the morning and wedding breakfast was really that, a breakfast, brunch or lunch eaten with the closest guests. Later during the 20th century weddings moved slowly from daytime and lunch affairs to evening parties we are familiar today.

It meant that after the ceremony, guests were invited for champagne and cake to a nearby hotel or the home of the bride and it was considered extremely fancy affair.

Well into 20th century is was typical that the wedding dress was bride’s best outfit or a new better dress. It was thought that afterwards the wedding dress could be used in any fancy party or occasion. The rough times of WWI, Depression and WWII meant that the big white dresses we seen in vintage wedding photos were used only by the luckiest. Other popular colors for wedding dresses have been black (!), pale blue and powdery pink and mauve amongst others.

There’s so many wonderful cakes nowadays and the wedding cake can be an event in itself like in the Champagne weddings. Earlier times and in the country weddings the cake might have been baked at home and decorated by someone who was artistic with things like flowers, cream, sugar paste, the figurine that was used in every wedding of the family, fresh berries etc. In the countryside the vintage wedding might have been abig event but it was understood that everyone would pitch in.

People traveled inside their own country for honeymoons if they had a possibility to have a honeymoon. Very few got a chance to make a trip to somewhere exotic. If the honeymoon in Maldives isn’t in your budget, you could think what kind of other places you have always wanted to visit.

Flowers have always been a big part of weddings. When fresh flowers were almost impossible to get like in cold seasons during WWII in Europe, brides crafted small sprays of flowers from paper for their wedding day. In 1920’s brides added things like feathers and love knots into their bouquets. Roses, lilies, carnations and sweet peas have been popular flowers through the ages.

There you go! We hope you’ve gotten many ideas and things to think about. If you liked the blogpost, drop the like and follow us in our Instagram!