The Tamesis
“I love vintage, I love antiques, I love anything old,” said Lizzie Nelson Fashion. So when it came time to choose an outfit for her wedding to Samual Cox in New Hampshire, it was no surprise that she chose to wear three vintage bridal pieces on her wedding day. Two of the looks were heirlooms that family members wore to their own weddings, while another was carefully sourced from a vintage bridal shop.
Lizzie grew up surrounded by fashion—her mother designed menswear for Timberland, and her aunt worked at Ralph Lauren Purple Label. “Playing dress-up was a regular activity for my sister and I,” she said. “But a lot of the time it was playing in real clothes, not Party City costumes.” She recalls running around as a child wearing Ralph Lauren runway samples, mink scarves and her grandmother’s wigs, and watching her mother sketch her designs.
With her inner sartorial spirit in mind, she was ready to take on the challenge of curating and reinventing vintage pieces for her wedding day. The ceremony and reception will be held at a club in her coastal New Hampshire hometown. “It feels like a private home with a very intimate tent on the ocean,” Lizzie describes. “We both like to dress up and have fun, but we’re both very low-key, so this venue felt like the perfect blend of both.”
Photo: Parker Selman
Lizzie found her go-to wedding dress at Cha Cha Linda, a vintage store in Brooklyn that specializes in restored, one-of-a-kind pieces. Before the first date, she invited her newly engaged bridesmaids to come along and shouldered half of the date herself. While her bridesmaids found a dress that day, Lizzie needed to keep looking. She went to Happy Isles, another vintage wedding salon, and tried on new gowns from major bridal designers. “I probably tried on at least 50 different dresses and just didn’t have the time to spend with them,” the bride shared. One day, her bridesmaid sent her a private message about one of the dresses posted on Cha Cha Linda’s page, and Lizzie knew she had to try it. She texted the owner, Eva Lopez, who snuck her in before making an appointment the next day.
The dress is by Carolina Herrera and is from the designer’s first bridal collection in 1987. This dark ivory gown with a subtle floral pattern features a sweetheart neckline, a dropped waistline, a detachable cape and a rosette at the front. When Lizzie arrived and saw Lopez hanging it on a hanger, she was wondering if she would like the design. However, she recalled, “We put it on, looked at each other, kind of laughed, and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is really cool.'”
