Want to know what the masses aren’t doing? Read on.
It’s the time of year when wedding publications trawl search data, surveys and anecdotes to summarise the biggest trends in weddings this year and make their predictions for 2026 (here’s one from Hitched for example).
Bridgerton gowns, bubble hems, basque waists, second dresses and statement veils (duh) are on the rise, apparently. As interesting and insightful as all this is, as with all wedding traditions, my advice remains: adopt the ones that work for you and forget about the rest.
For anyone needing an antidote to reports on what everyone else is doing, here’s my own 2025 round-up of anti-trends: this is a report of what no-one else is doing, what people asked me to make for them because they couldn’t find it in the mainstream boutiques.
These are the wedding un-trends.
Ice-cream shades of pink and mint green, overlaid with bright floral embroidery……and some in-jokes, cute personal references and favourite characters.The bride’s late mum’s handwriting embroidered in blue on the ribbon wrapping her bouquetTribute tattoo embroidered on a veilTurn it greenTurn it pink, blush, peach and purpleAdd textureAdd volumeMake it the longest veil I’ve ever createdMake it change colour in daylightMake it CinderellaMake it Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and ZeldaMatching – but not too closely matching – jacket embroideryPumpkins and flowersPastel embroidery to repair the bride’s mother’s original veil
And there are more, but as the weddings have yet to take place, I can’t reveal all yet. But here’s a clue about one of them:
When people ask how you’re having your hair on your wedding day, they’re not usually talking about your armpits.
Beautiful Meg in our styled shoot. Full credits below
When the photos dropped from our fairytale styled shoot earlier this year, I was thrilled to see our model bride Meg rocking the natural underarm look. What made me even happier was that it was a complete non-issue; it wasn’t mentioned at any point in planning the shoot, on the day, afterwards or anywhere the photos were published, including on social media or in Pretty & Punk.
So I’ve debated internally whether to even blog about it because I didn’t want to make it a thing. But I do want to make normalising brides with body hair a thing, so here we are.
Sorry…
Barely a week goes by without hearing a bride apologise for her underarm/bikini/leg hair during a dress fitting. Honey, I’ll show you mine if it’ll make you feel better, and I’m not apologising for it.
I’m not advocating that everyone ditches the razor as it’s a personal choice how you style your hair wherever it is on your body. But I do want everyone to feel comfortable about their choices (or just what’s there that day, chosen or not).
Personally, I’ve gone through phases of shaving, waxing, epilalating, IPL-ing, plucking and letting it all do its thing. It still varies.
“Mummy, why do you shave your armpits?”
It’s been ten years since my toddler asked me, “Mummy, why do you shave your armpits?” and I really had to think about it.
“Fashion,” I told her, because that’s ultimately all it is. Oh, and to make money by playing on women’s insecurities about their appearance of course.
The Smithsonian Institution reports that the 1920s fashion for sleeveless tops and short dresses revealed western women’s legs and underarms for the first time, “and advertisers seized the opportunity to tell women to shave.” Boom! The razor manufacturers doubled their target market.
When my toddler subsequently started school, a classmate was bullied about the dark hair on her arms and legs, because apparently some children believed girls shouldn’t have hair anywhere other than their scalps (but lots it there of course). She was FOUR years old.
Mercifully, my own child seemed immune. “I can’t wait to have hair in my armpits,” my then 5-year-old told me, “So I can dye it like a rainbow.”
She hasn’t yet, but I’m here for it if she ever does.
What I’m really thinking when I say brides,bridalwear etc
My blog post that’s currently blowing up (for me; everything’s relative) about making wedding dresses for people of all genders and sexes included this side note about the term ‘bridalwear’:
I use the term bridalwear as loosely as possible because not all of my customers identify as brides. I try to use more inclusive terms where I can. I specialise in dresses and the traditionally more feminine styles of weddingwear such as dresses, veils, jumpsuits and separates rather than men’s suiting and tailoring and I’m still answerable to the SEO gods – I need people to find me! As language, attitudes and social mores evolve, this will change of course. In the meantime, I’m always happy to learn and stand corrected if I’m saying or doing something deplorable.
I want to elaborate. I almost always do.
It’s a topic very close to my heart, my family and my English Language degree.
I can’t do away with the term. At least not yet.
Many of my customers not only identify as a bride but embrace the (hopefully) once in a lifetime opportunity to be The Bride. I don’t want to deny them that.
When I know someone is happy to be called a bride, I will use the term for that individual in my conversations with them and in describing them publicly.
Others don’t. I equally don’t want to force an erroneous identity on them or make them feel excluded or othered. I always endeavour to check. Some prefer marrier, partner, or something else.
When I’m talking generally about unknown individuals, I use inclusive, gender-neutral language such as couples, spouse, nearly-weds or customers.
I completed an LBGTQ Awareness Course four years ago with the sadly now defunct Wedding Business School a few years back.
I’d hoped to revisit it for this post but will have to rely on my memory. Quite rightly, it advocated gender-neutral terms.
But I’m finding it tricky to describe what I do, and who I do it for, without saying bridal or bridalwear.
I could – and do – say I make wedding dresses, but I don’t just make those; I make veils, jumpsuits, playsuits and separates including trousers, skirts, capes and overskirts too. My very first foray into creating wedding outfits was inspired by the bow-ties and masculine tailoring of Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco.
Credits below*
And I love throwing androgynous flamboyance into the mix, like I did when I created the Skye shirt-cape:
But if I say I make wedding outfits or weddingwear, that feels like it covers more than I actually do, because I don’t make traditional menswear like tailcoats, shirts, waistcoats and morning suits.
So I don’t want to waste anyone’s time by contacting me about making them something I don’t make.
And I do want to stay visible in search results when people look for “bridalwear near me”. Don’t even get me started on hashtags. I have to use the hashtags that people looking for the kind of things I make use so they can find me.
How about emojis? Decorative, convenient shorthand, especially where there are character limits. When there are gender neutral options, I use those. If I can use female, male and non-binary together, so much the better.
My Instagram highlight of real customers
For example, on my Instagram, I have a highlight featuring my customers in my creations on their wedding days. Originally I called it Real Brides, which was the maximum character limit that would stay visible on my profile. When I realised this was not only not inclusive but also inaccurate, I changed it to Real Customers, but only Real Custom remained visible and just looked odd. Similarly, Real Weddings became Real Weddin.
Emojis to the rescue. Then I had to pick which skin colours to include (and exclude). ARGH!
Ultimately, I have carved a career out of celebrating individuality. That’s what bespoke is.
So whoever you are and however you identify, please know that I see you, I love you and I’m just waiting for the language and SEO gods to catch up.
*Venue: @weddings_the_boat_shed_salt Photography: @photosbypaloma Bridalwear: me! @hollywintercouture Model: @gabbywaite97 Flowers: @lilybee822 Jeweller: @bishboshbecca Headpieces: @peacock_and_pearl Shoes: @irregularchoice Hair and make-up: @tonisearlemua Cakes: @annalewiscakes Mobile bar: @effervescerefreshments
It’s official: the “un-bride” is in. This is ironic as it essentially means that not following trends is the trend.
The stylist soothsayers are stirring their big-data cauldrons this week and forecasting the wedding trends for 2024. Amid the peach fuzz and torn up seating plans, I was pleasantly surprised that for the second year, the crux according to my bellwether Vogue is that formality and traditions will take a backseat to individual style.
So you can keep your big data, front-row seats at Wedding Fashion Week and your cauldrons (but I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth) because I get to see what that actually means in practice. My customers tend to come to me when they have a good idea what they want but can’t find it in the shops – because it’s not something that would take off in the mainstream because not enough people would buy it.
And that’s the awesome thing.
So, based on what people have been asking me for over the last year, here’s what un-briding is looking like. The un-trends.
Transforming dress: see Gill’s detachable train and detachable cape. I’ve also been asked for a voluminous plain dress that unzips at the moment of the first dance
Not a dress. Jumpsuits, playsuits, trousers, separates, shirts with trains. Mixing up the traditionally masculine and feminine, like Skye’s Shakespearean Shirt of Dreams.
Lace that isn’t floral. Have embroidery software, will create lace. I’ve created bespoke lace and embroidery made of moons, text, pets, in-jokes, bats carrying antique micrometers and the handwriting of lost loved ones. I can even do photos if you fancy having your bodice made from other half’s embroidered face (or why stop there? Let’s make the skirt out of all the faces of your in-laws). The next dress I’m making has some of my most ambitious lace I’ve ever made and I am SO excited to show it (and slightly scared about potential legal action).
Colour. I made more black, blush (hello, peach fuzz!) red and blue veils last year than ivory while my bespoke ivory wedding dresses were level pegging with other colours.
Upcycling. I’ve just finished restyling a wedding dress as a cocktail dress (I’ll share pics as soon as it’s had it’s big reveal by the bride) and have incorporated lace from mothers’ and grandmothers’ wedding dresses and veils into others. Save the planet, share the love.
