“I love vintage, love antiquing, love anything old,” Lizzie Nelson tells Vogue. So it’s no surprise, then, that when selecting her wardrobe for her New Hampshire nuptials to Samual Cox, she chose to wear three vintage bridal garments to wear on her wedding day. Two looks were heirloom pieces worn by family members to their own nuptials, while the other was carefully sourced from a vintage bridal shop.
Lizzie grew up surrounded by fashion—with her mother designing menswear for Timberland and her aunt working at Ralph Lauren Purple Label. “Playing dress up was a regular activity for my sister and I,” she says. “But it was a lot of playing dress up in real clothes—not in costumes from Party City.” She recalls running around in Ralph Lauren runway samples, mink scarves, and her grandmother’s wigs when she was young, as well as watching her mother sketch her designs.
With that sartorial spirit already in her, she was ready to take on the challenge of both curating and redesigning vintage pieces for her wedding day. The ceremony and reception would take place at a club in her coastal hometown in New Hampshire. “It felt like a private house with a very intimate tent on the ocean,” describes Lizzie. “We both like to dress up and have fun, but we’re both pretty low key, so the venue felt like a perfect blend of both.”
Lizzie found her main wedding dress at Brooklyn-based vintage store Cha Cha Linda, which specializes in restored, one-of-a-kind pieces. Before the first appointment, she asked her recently engaged bridesmaid to join and take half the appointment for herself. While her bridesmaid found a dress that day, Lizzie needed to keep looking. She went to another vintage wedding salon Happy Isles, and also tried on new gowns by major bridal designers. “I probably tried on at least 50 different dresses, but just didn’t have a moment with them,” the bride shares. One day, her bridesmaid sent her a DM with a dress posted on Cha Cha Linda’s page, and Lizzie knew she had to try it. She texted the store’s owner, Eva Lopez, who was able to sneak her in before her appointments the next day.
The dress was by Carolina Herrera, from the designer’s first bridal collection in 1987. The deep ivory gown with a faint floral print featured a sweetheart neckline, a dropped waistline, and a removable shawl with a rosette at the front. Lizzie was doubting if she would love the design when she arrived and saw it on the hanger with Lopez. However, she recalls, “We put it on, both looked at each other, kind of laughed, and were like, ‘Wait, it’s really good.’”
The two played around with the look and discovered they loved it when the shawl was flipped backwards to be off the shoulders, with the rosette at the rear. “I had minimal time to think about it and knew that I wasn t gonna find anything else like that,” remembers Lizzie. “So I just went for it and regretted nothing.”
One part of Lizzie’s wedding dress vision she did not want to sacrifice was having a long train. She was referred to Ann Hamilton, a seamstress in New York City who specializes in recreating vintage bridal looks, to create a detachable style that worked perfectly with the gown. The trickiest part of the process was finding the right fabric to match the 1980s cream gown. “Ann went through dozens and dozens of different fabrics, and she couldn’t find it,” says Lizzie. Three weeks before the wedding, Hamilton found the perfect fit and constructed the train in time for the celebration. “She has such a fantastic eye, is so creative, and is great at problem solving,” says the bride. To finish off the look, Hamilton added buttons to the back of the bodice and crafted Lizzie a veil for her walk down the aisle.
After cocktail hour, Lizzie removed both the train and the rosette shawl to give herself flexibility for dancing. A final sentimental piece Lizzie added to her look that is technically both old and new? A pair of custom earrings by Larkspur Hawk that featured a piece of lace from her grandmother’s wedding dress. “The owner is a family friend of Sam’s family and had just started doing bridal,” says Lizzie. The earrings use an 18th-century foiling technique that brings shine to the fabric. Not only did she use her grandmother’s lace, but she also used a bit of blue ribbon to craft a “something blue” moment in her ensemble. Lizzie loved that she could not only have the earrings for her wedding day, but could also wear the nostalgic item for the rest of her life. “It was a really special way to honor her legacy and have a piece of her with me always,” she says.
The lace came from the first look Lizzie knew she was going to wear—her grandmother’s Priscilla of Boston wedding dress from 1958. The silk gown featured hand-beading, long sleeves, and a boat neckline. “It was kind of like a running joke in our family my whole life that we always have grandma s dress for when you get married one day,” says Lizzie. Not only did her mother also wear the dress as her “something old” on her wedding day, but so did multiple aunts within a four-year span.
Originally, Lizzie was unsure if she would want to wear the garment too. “When I got engaged, I went home to see my parents for the first time, and my mom brought it out,” she shares. “I remember putting it on and thought it was pretty incredible. I couldn’t believe something from that long ago is still intact.”
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Over the years, the dress did see some alterations. One aunt let it out, and another removed the long sleeves. After Lizzie had tried on the gown, her cousin decided to wear it for her 2023 wedding and—with Lizzie’s approval—gave the skirt a high-low hem. Lizzie says she decided, “We’re only going up from here.” Once again, she turned to Hamilton as her alterations expert. Along with her help, she was able to convert the dress into a two-piece set—a top and a mini bubble skirt—to wear for her reception.
“We kept the entire same structure of the top so it looks like a dress in person,” she adds. The bubble skirt idea came from the internal structure of the high-low version of the dress. She also liked how the bubble would help lend the look a slightly modern edge. “We keep joking that my sister is going to get a crop top out of it, because she’ll be the last woman in the family to potentially want to wear it,” she says.
When she went to put the look on inside with her sister, her seven-month pregnant cousin Cass—who wore it previously—happened to run into them. “We grabbed her and were like, ‘You have to come. We are putting on grandma’s dress,’” remembers Lizzie. When they arrived back at the tent, Lizzie asked Cass to head to the stage with her to explain the significance of the dress and their grandmother. “She was our matriarch and very special to us. We all had this very teary-eyed moment on stage where we felt like she was there,” she recalls. “It was just so nice.”
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Another heirloom that would make its way to her wedding after-party? A two-piece Donna Karen set that her mother wore as her own second look in the ‘90s. The cream silk ensemble featured a long button-down shirt and drawstring silk pants. Lizzie brought her mother along to Hamilton’s studio to get her permission on a new idea—transforming the pants into a more structured, tailored style and shortening the top to fit her height. “I wanted her approval because she worked in design and has a lot of opinions,” says Lizzie.
Luckily, Lizzie got the go-ahead to alter the silhouette. The bride also decided she wanted to wear the shirt loose and open, like her mother did with a silk cami and a pearl choker. For this, she needed to create a new layering piece. “The top was made custom by Ann Hamilton with existing fabric from the set and silk we sourced to pair with it,” she says. As a side note, Lizzie adds that she did not get off the dance floor all night: “I actually think the looks lended themselves well to that. I could dance the whole time and felt so comfortable.”
Reflecting on her entire wedding wardrobe, Lizzie says, “I didn’t want it to feel I’m doing vintage for the sake of vintage. I wanted it to be like a recreation of something that was in my family or had so much history—but also felt like me.”
