1960s vintage bridal dresses in Edinburgh –  Where to find vintage wedding dresses with Those Were The Days Bridal

1 August 2019

It’s not hyperbolic to say Those Were The Days Bridal is a slice of vintage heaven nestled in the heart of Edinburgh.

Their rare and ever-changing vintage bridal collection spans from the Edwardian era to the 1990s, and with each piece hand-picked, the full collection is always guaranteed to be nothing but the best quality. They specialise in beautiful, easy to wear, romantic dresses you won’t find anywhere else and you definitely won’t see anyone else wearing! We asked the lovely owner, Claire, to tell us about how each piece is picked, so that you can know exactly what its story was before it came to be a part of yours:

“We’ve chosen all of the wedding dresses in our collection because they’re beautiful, glamorous dresses that we’ve fallen in love with, and because they’re wonderful examples of each era’s styles and fashion history. Each dress is also selected because of the high quality of its condition, design, fabric and craftsmanship. Our dresses are unique and a little bit quirky, often quite modest, and a bit more alternative in style, so they’re the perfect alternative to modern wedding dresses. And as with our fashion collections, every item is expertly cleaned and restored before it arrives in the boutique.

We travel far and wide to find our wedding dresses and handpick everything in our collections. We often travel to Los Angeles or New York in our quest to find amazing vintage dresses because we have friends and family there, and closer to home we like to visit London because it’s got lots of fab vintage sources. It all sounds very glamorous and fun, and don’t get me wrong it definitely can be…but it’s also a lot of hard work sourcing the dresses. There’s a lot of very early morning starts to visit vintage fairs and markets, a lot of travel and a lot of carrying really heavy bags of dresses in really hot temperatures if we’re in LA or New York, or sometimes in the rain and cold if we’re in London…or again, New York! And there’s a lot of shipping organisation and costs too – but it’s so worth it to keep finding all these amazing vintage treasures.

Most of the pieces in this 60s inspired shoot with the lovely Melody Joy were all found on our most recent trip to LA. I chose them all because they’re all quite iconic and rare 1960s styles and when we met our model Addison, we thought they would look amazing styled with her gorgeous bobbed hair! I love all the pieces we included in the shoot but I was super excited to find the marabou trimmed long dress. It’s such a rare and collectable dress and a really fabulous piece. I spotted it hanging at a stall at a vintage fair in Hollywood and practically raced across the fair to get hold of it before anyone else found it! The space age full length dress with the long sleeves and the spotty fabric is another rare piece I was excited to find and I came across it at a really cute vintage store in Santa Monica and just had to have it. And the little dress and coat suit was calling out to me from behind a bundle of fur coats in another vintage fair we went to at Venice Beach. It’s so Jackie O in style I fell I love with it straight away! There was no way I was leaving it behind.

The jumpsuit actually dates from the 1980s but we included it in the shoot because it’s so cool and again really rare, and Addison totally rocked it!

There’s nothing beats that feeling we get when we find amazing bridal wear that we know we’ll be able to restore and bring back to life for our vintage loving brides! It’s so exciting.”