The best repro flapper hat I've seen

You've got the perfect 1920s hairstyle, but now you need a flapper hat to go with it — where do you look?

Although I was able to find a real 1920s cloche for my wedding, they are actually pretty difficult to find. Good reproductions can be almost as hard to come by. So when I saw this reproduction flapper hat on eBay, I knew my readers would be interested! Isn't it beautiful...and so authentically 1920s?



This hat would look absolutely adorable with a 1920s hairstyle such as a bob or finger waves. I love how the hair on the model just peeks out from underneath.



The colors are great for a wedding, too — you could put your bridesmaids in mocha-colored flapper dresses to match the trim on the hat! But hurry — the auction for the hat ends on May 28, 2008!



The designer is Berti Borrell of Cloche Couture. I mentioned her once in a post about finding 1920s hats. I absolutely LOVE Berti's work. Her hats might seem a little pricey at first glance, but when you consider that they're all one-of-a-kind designer hats, not to mention how difficult (and expensive!) it is to find the real thing in wearable condition, they're really quite reasonable.

Photos copyright © Cloche Couture. Posted with permission from Berti Borrell.

1920s flapper accessories: Garter flask holder

I was contacted the other day by a woman who makes a product she thought I'd like — and she was right! Boy, I wish I had known about her garter flask holders before my wedding!

Although the garter flask holders are made for any type of wedding or other occasion, they are SO fitting for 1920s theme weddings and parties. Garter flask holders were used by flappers and other women during Prohibition in order to conceal illegal liquor. Garter flask holders for the ladies in your wedding party would be a perfect addition to a speakeasy-themed wedding reception!

The Juliette Wear site shows several wedding photos with the ladies in the wedding party all wearing their garter flask holders. Some wear theirs concealed under full gowns, while others wear them so that they're visible under shorter gowns. My favorite is the picture of the bridesmaids in green with hot pink garter flask holders. They were obviously meant to be seen, and they look great!

The site sells garter flask holders in half a dozen different colors, but with an option for custom orders — so you can really have fun with this one!

Revealing wedding photos

The photographers we used for our 1920s wedding really did have a sense of humor. They got a lovely picture of me sneezing and another of me rubbing my nose, but the classic one was of me hiking up my wedding gown to straighten out the slip underneath:



The other revealing wedding photo was one taken by my bridesmaid's boyfriend. The stairs of the winery (once an old church) were very steep, so each time I went up or down I gathered my skirt in one hand and held it well out of the way. I didn't realize at the time how much leg I was showing when I did this...



Nothing like capturing the truly memorable moments in a bride's special night!

Our spring 1920s-themed wedding

As I mentioned in a previous post, the spring wedding season is starting.

My husband and I were married at a 1920s-themed wedding in April 2007. I think spring is a lovely time to get married, for several reasons: Because it's such a pretty season, because it's not too hot, and because it's a symbolic time for a new beginning.

Of course, spring weddings can also be quite a challenge, because it is the beginnign of the rainy season in many places. Luckily, the day Michael and I chose for our wedding was sunny and perfectly clear.

A risk of spring weddings that we did encounter was that sometimes a late frost can kill or retard the new spring growth. Our wedding was in the courtyard at a winery, which is usually draped with grape vines. Unfortunately, a week of hard frost in late March or early April meant that there wasn't much green growth on the vines.



Of course, there was enough green growth to take this series of pictures, which turned out to be among my favorites of all the pictures of Michael and I together:



It really was a perfect wedding!

1920s hairstyles: Easy finger waves

When we were planning my 1920s wedding, my sister and I decided to try to find a way to do our hair in 1920s hairstyles. Laura asked her stylist, who showed her how to do easy finger waves.

Instead of doing the finger waves the old-fashioned way — painstakingly sculpting each wave with a comb — my sister's stylist showed her how to do it using wave clips. Here are a few pictures of the process that the photographers took while my sister was getting ready for the wedding.

Working section by section, Laura formed her hair into fingerwaves, placing the wave clips in the low spots of the waves to hold them. Her hair is naturally curly too (though not as curly as mine), so her stylist told her to work with where her hair naturally wants to wave or curl.





Once the wave clips were in place, Laura sprayed the section with hairspray and hit it with the hair dryer to set the waves.





And the end result:



I just have to post this one — it's a great picture of her hair, but the expression is classic. I guess the photographers caught her by surprise:



This method didn't work in my hair, of course — mine is way too curly on its own to take to fingerwaves. However, I think my 1920s hairstyle still turned out great!

Our one-year wedding anniversary

Michael and I recently celebrated our one-year anniversary. I can't believe it has already been more than a year since we planned our 1920s wedding! Since then, this blog has grown to attract several hundred visitors a day, many of them coming to find information on 1920s theme weddings, 1920s hairstyles, and 1920s costumes.

It would have been fun to dress up and celebrate our wedding anniversary 1920s style, but we didn't think of it in time. Instead, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, shared some really good Asian food, and got tipsy. (Well, I did — Michael was driving.)

In honor of our anniversary, I'd like to post a couple of new wedding photos: