My reclaimed vintage wedding necklace
I got married a couple weeks ago!
Personally, I never thought I’d get married (never saw the point to it, really), so I had never thought about what it’d look like if I did.
In the end we did something very simple, just a small ceremony at our local town hall with close relatives, followed by a lunch at a pub we like in the area. My parents came over from Brazil, so that was nice! I used the wedding as an excuse to splurge on all the things I had always wanted to own but couldn’t justify the cost, like a 1930s dress, fancy 3D manicure and those vintage-y looking cakes I always post about on Instagram 😂 You are welcome to appreciate my fancy mani on my adjustable ring product photos!
Obviously I had to make a custom necklace design for my own wedding, and I decided to use the beads of a couple of vintage necklaces I got at Feira do Bixiga last year, when I last visited home. Those Murano vases were just a few of the things I saw there on my last visit.
Feira do Bixiga is an antiques market in São Paulo, Brazil, where I’m from, and it happens every Sunday at the Bixiga neighborhood. Bixiga is the neighborhood where traditionally a lot of Italian families lived when they first moved to São Paulo, and it’s the neighborhood my dad was born and grew up in. We’d very often go to the antiques market together, so it was really special for me to be wearing beads from there for my wedding 😊
These were the two necklaces I got there! They weren’t built that well (no clasp, thread frailing) and were a bit too plain for me 💅 so when I got back to London I cleaned them, took them apart and added their beads to my vintage bead stash.
The beads I used from them were the faceted green and pink ones you can see in the picture, a type of bead called Atlas beads. These beads were produced between the 1930s and 1980s, but the more modern ones are machine-cut - still beautiful, just not literally handmade anymore. These two necklaces I got probably dated from the 1960s, given their style and bead finishes (aurora borealis, in the green one, was only patented in 1956).
To add a bit more pizzazz to my design, I also added the opaline glass beads from this crazy 1950s necklace. I love how whoever made it just decided to add random green beads to one extremity only. I cleaned it and took the necklace apart to use its beads :)
Atlas beads are a firm favourite of mine, so I actually had more in other colours in my bead stash already! I started this design like I start all my designs, which is placing the beads in the order I think they’d look good in and then changing it up and deciding if they do look good as I go.
It’s the magic of using vintage beads - the beads I have lead the design and it’s up to me to find the best way to display them. It’s a very different process from having a design in mind and then getting beads made to match it.
This is the neckalce, almost done! I loved how the beads are all slightly different from one another. The extra magic of using vintage beads!
My earrings were also made by me, using puzzle beads I got in Paris last year at a shop that bought the stock of a shop that went out of business in the 1930s. My boyfriend also proposed during the trip, so it was fitting to wear beads that came from there too!
The main inspiration for the colour palette was the 1960s purse I would be wearing too :)
This is what we looked like in the end :) It was a very joyous occasion and I’m really happy we did it!
If you have a wedding, anniversary, birthday party or any sort of special occasion coming up, feel free to hit me up in my Commissions page to get your very own custom design, made only for you! I can say, from experience, that knowing that what you are wearing is truly special and one of a kind really adds to the whole event 💝 I’d love to help make your dream necklace or earrings come true ✨
You can also see everything I have made using vintage beads over at the Shop!