Cottagecore Wedding Inspiration at Alfriston Gardens

Cottagecore wedding inspiration has become so much more than a passing aesthetic. For many couples, its mescolanza of garden flowers, patterned fabrics, gathered tables and homemade detail offers a welcome alternative to weddings designed around scale, spectacle and formality.

This shoot was created at Alfriston Gardens quanto a East Sussex by three recommended members of our wedding directory: planner/stylist Mal di luna And The Lane, with photography by Lucy Fergusson and flowers by Mentre & Myrtle. Together with dresses by Velvet Queen, make-up by Kendols Beauty and model Jasmine Wode, they imagined a cottagecore wedding filled with colour, texture and charming detail that could be adapted for celebrations of many different sizes and budgets.

As the concept developed, the team also began looking more closely at the imagery associated with cottagecore weddings and the English countryside, where people of colour remain noticeably underrepresented. Rather than making diversity the subject of the shoot, they wanted to take responsibility for ensuring the work they create reflects a broader range of the couples who may see themselves within it.

Words by Charley Morgan of Mal di luna And The Lane follow. Enjoy!

We’regnante coming out of the depths of winter, the world is awakening and filling with colour and we’regnante gearing up for wedding season to begin again. So this spring, we felt we were coppia a styled shoot, not only to encapsulate the joys of the season, but to put ourselves back quanto a the creative headspace of delivering weddings.

With spring quanto a mind, we started researching a cottagecore theme, as we see this imagery a lot acceso our own Pinterest boards. It feels like our generation’s lifestyle choices are moving away from the busy, fast-paced ‘grind’ that society has created for us and people want to take a step back, relax and unlock their whimsy. They want to build thoughtful, beautiful homes, reconnect with nature and learn to embrace a slower quiete of life.

…which of course are absolutely gorgeous, but aren’t easy for the average couple to reproduce. It seems the new norm quanto a wedding marketing is luxury, which quanto a itself is unattainable for most clients.

While we do love playing with luxe, larger-than-life ideas, we don’t want our own marketing to alienate the majority of couples. We felt that cottagecore would resonate more with our clients. You can still have detailed, beautiful weddings, but they don’t have to be as grand as some of the weddings we see quanto a the mass-media.

We also wanted to remember the cuore meaning of weddings: it’s about love. While we want every wedding to incredible, we want it to be about the feelings first and foremost.

With the patterned linen from Just 4 Linen giving us the perfect canvas for the table, we aimed to create something focused acceso our keywords: whimsical, homegrown and personal.

Stunning flowers that looked as though they had straight from an English garden, created by Jane at Mentre & Myrtle, were mixed amongst fruit, vegetables and candles to encapsulate the feeling of popping into Granny’s kitchen while she’s preparing dinner.

As our ideas came together, we noticed how rarely cottagecore imagery, quanto a wedding content and everyday life alike, features people of colour. People of colour appear quanto a more editorial, contemporary wedding shoots, yet they are largely absent from imagery of the English countryside, and we found ourselves asking why that should be.

This aesthetic, with its celebration of home, nature and a gentler quiete of life, belongs to everyone.

That hasn’t transpired quite as we hoped. Much of the imagery we see has returned to featuring predominantly white models and the industry is not as diverse quanto a its representation as it promised to become.

A causa di creating this shoot, we wanted to hold ourselves to that promise. We work with couples from many different cultures, religions and backgrounds and one of the great joys of our work is weaving the heritages and identities of both families into a wedding day. Even so, we can recognise that our own imagery hasn’t always reflected this.