The Bride Wore Vintage John Galliano for Her Halloween Wedding at Belvoir Castle
Most wedding days don’t start with an IV drip. But then, Tish Weinstock is not most brides. A swift vitamin C boost to rejuvenate the wedding party was just one of several surprises Tish—a beauty journalist, former British Vogue editor, and famously ethereal presence on the fashion scene—and her groom, stylist Tom Guinness, had in store for their friends.
The wedding was a three-day bacchanal staged over Halloween weekend at Belvoir Castle, the 11th-century ancestral home of the Duke of Rutland, with a guestlist including Kate and Lila Moss, Adwoa Aboah, and Ivy Getty. Other unique touches included a pub quiz hosted by writer and man about town Jack Guinness to kick off the celebrations on Friday night, a menu devised by chef Tom Straker (best known as TikTok’s king of butter), and the resurrection of an infamous Soho club night frequented by both Tish and Tom in the days before they were a couple (Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues). And that’s before we get to the bride’s three antique and vintage wedding gowns.
“I thought, what’s scarier than a wedding? … A Halloween wedding,” Tish says of the couple’s decision to really lean into the time of year—and their impossibly atmospheric venue. “October in England just felt right,” says the bride, who briefly considered, then dismissed, the idea of a destination wedding (“I didn’t want to spend the day covered in mosquito repellent”). “The castle is so beautiful and October is my birthday month… I’m an autumnal creature,” she adds.
Guests were invited to wear fancy dress for Friday night’s pub quiz at the Wheel Inn on the Belvoir estate, with the bride and groom dressing up as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet (“It feels like the last year we can get away with being 15-year-olds,” Tish says), while the dress code for the ceremony itself was “black tie gothic.” “They can interpret that how they want,” the bride told Vogue a few days ahead of the wedding, planned with the help of creative agency My Beautiful City. “I’m anticipating a lot of black,” Tish says. “Adwoa is someone who always goes all out for Halloween. She said, do you want me to tone it down? I was like, no!”
Needless to say, toning it down was never on the agenda for Tish herself. “I knew I wanted it to be quite gothic, Miss Havisham vibes,” she says of her dress for the ceremony, meaning a trip to Jane Bourvis’s Notting Hill studio, an Aladdin’s cave of exquisite vintage lace and antique textiles, was in order. “None of the dresses that were there quite spoke to me,” says the bride, who managed to persuade Bourvis to work on a custom piece. “I was like, I know you don’t make dresses from scratch, but please, you have to!”
A piece of Normandy lace Bourvis had bought at auction formed the body of the dress, with still more antique lace repurposed for the dramatic sleeves. “It’s based on Morticia Addams, who is my style icon, obviously!” says Tish. “Morticia, but make it bridal.” A stunning ’30s style veil was the perfect finishing touch. “Most veils are held together with a clip at the back, but I was looking at this amazing Jean Paul Gaultier bride whose veil had a clip at either side of her head. That’s what we’ve done and I’m so happy with it,” says Tish, who was thrilled to put her personal stamp on her wedding gown. “I had a hand in designing it which I wasn’t expecting,” she says. “It was a collaboration—an amazing one.”
Tish dispensed with tradition to get a professional opinion from her groom (whose own look for the wedding day incorporated John Galliano’s Margiela and Wales Bonner). “I know it’s supposed to be bad luck, but he saw it in his capacity as a stylist,” she says. “But then he got too involved, he was like, okay, you need to wear it with the Loewe shoes. I was like, back off, stay in your lane!” In the end, Tish settled on perhaps the most coveted shoe of the season: the Miu Miu ballet flat. “I suddenly had visions of tripping in heels,” she explains. “I feel much safer in them.”
Next up: a spectacular vintage gown from John Galliano’s fall 2009 collection—titled *Beautifully Iced Maidens—*for drinks after the ceremony. Tish was scrolling Instagram late at night when she spotted the dress on the Shrimpton Couture feed, and immediately reached out to founder Cherie Balch. “I told her, I need this dress! I think a lot of people wanted it, but Cherie was amazing,” Tish says. “She just said: It’s yours.”
Balch herself describes the piece as a “holy grail” for vintage lovers. “Even though this was a ready-to-wear collection the final gowns for the show were made in the Paris ateliers, and the beadwork was done by Lesage,” she tells Vogue. “The show closed with seven dresses dubbed the ‘Ukrainian ice princesses’, and this is perhaps the most recognizable of all of them. When Tish spotted it and told me she wanted it for her wedding I knew that it was meant to be. It is truly an extraordinary dress for an extraordinary woman.”
