A nostalgic lakeside vintage wedding in Cornwall captured on analogue film wedding Photography

35mm analogue wedding photographer in cornwall with kitsch nostalgic style and retro wedding dress

Abbie & Rory's delightfully vintage wedding is a treat for the eyes. Shot on a mix of film & digital, here we’re sharing the analogue highlights of their retro wedding with a pink wedding dress by Belle & Bunty, an airstream trailer bar and the most adorable kitschy wedding table decor you ever did see. Whether you're searching for an alternative wedding photographer or some vintage & colourful wedding inspiration then let their day transport you back to 1978 to a little lakeside woodland in Cornwall.

Wedding suppliers involved:

This year has been a big year for film photography in the wedding industry. When Jon joined Lyra & Moth back in 2017, he brought with him his analogue know-how and collection of beautiful old film cameras which we’ve since expanded on shooting a few rolls here and there for fellow analogue lovers over the years. Flash forward to 2024 and the resurgence of love for analogue has taken the world by storm and 80% of our couples are requesting some amount of film coverage of their wedding day.

Abbie & Rory planned a beautifully nostalgic wedding full of pops of colour deep in the heart of Cornwall - think kitsch details & fun touches. From her pastel pink dress by Belle and Bunty to her gorgeously retro makeup-look, it was the perfect wedding to capture on film so that those delightful colours were really showcased with the Kodak Gold aesthetic.

Once upon a time in Cornwall

Cornish Tipis is an outdoorsy wedding venue set in a woodland quarry in the heart of Cornwall, not too far from Port Isaac. It has the prettiest green lake where you can have an outdoor, lakeside ceremony and has so much glamping accommodation so that all the wedding party can stay onsite. Abbie & Rory travelled down from London with their guests and the weather was on their side for the outdoor Cornwall wedding of their dreams.

The bride made her own cake with a mix she bought at Costco and decorated it with edible glitter and these adorable ceramic froggy lovers. Honestly one of the most delicious cakes I’ve ever eaten. I’m ready for all the cake makers to come for me…

She wore a vintage veil and dried colourful flowers for her bridal squad and silk rainbow flowers for herself. I’m normally such a fan of fresh flowers and big elaborate installations but her little silk bouquet was so cute and really suited the vibe. The lobster napkins too - I was obsessed with the decor and how fun and down to earth everything was. The handwritten and illustrated signs, the handmade touches throughout the decor and not to mention the little clay pipes that they had collected from months of mudlarking along the Thames all created such a vibe. It as a beautifully personal wedding that eschewed every wedding trend and we absolutely loved capturing it across a variety of formats.

We shot over medium format, 35mm and Polaroid alongside our digital coverage and thought it would be fun to create a post dedicated to some of our favourite film shots. It has such a distinctive and naive look that you just can’t recreate with editing and the quality of portraits on the medium format camera (We use a Hasselblad) just gets me every time.

wedding captured on Contax G2 35mm camera

The 90’s autofocus technology at its finest :P We used a mix of Contax G2, Pentax K1000 and Hasselblad for these. Shooting so much film this year has been such a learning curve and in a lot of ways, submitting to the whims of a very tempermental 30 year old camera which likes to break on me from time to time. It’s a good thing we always carry backups! It does mean that each shot feels hard earned and hard won though and when it goes right, dayum it feels good. Sometimes there are happy accidents too, and that’s just the unpredictable nature of film.

MEDIUM FORMAT

What is medium format? Why are photographers so obsessed with it? It’s basically a type of film camera and film that takes HUGE photographs. In our case, it’s a Hasselblad and it shoots square. You only get 12 shots per roll so it is pricey and doesn’t go far but you can blow these photographs up big. The detail and quality is beautiful and so worth the faff but due to its nature, they are suited to more set up and posed shots as it’s large, it’s clunky and you’ve gotta be relatively still. If you blink in that moment and ruin the shot, it’s like £5 down the drain. So why do we love it so much? Because it looks SO CUTE.

Following their lakeside ceremony, they rowed off in a little boat where we grabbed a few portraits of them before rejoining the party in the Glade for bubble gun chaos and delicious Cornish canapes. The colour of the water here is always a perfect turquoise and the film just really captured that colour so well. The dream.

weddings on medium format in cornwall and devon

We hope you enjoyed this little post showcasing all film!

This beautifully alternative wedding was one of the highlights of our year and we’re so grateful to Abbie & Rory for trusting us with their vision, for letting us go wild with a bundle of film cameras and to the wonderful Tipi team for having us back and looking after us so well.

Peace, Love & Good Vibes

Sarah & Jon x