The wedding series: The 2026 bridal trends you need to know

0:08This episode of Stylish is brought to you by Michael Hill. Diamond season is here. Find your wedding band, adorn your bridal party or mark a milestone. Welcome to the wedding series by Stylish, a three part series. Guys, third episode. You've been here for a while so you know it's all about weddings and wedding culture. I'm Rhiannon Joyce. And I'm Jo Fleming. So this is our second wedding series and if you've listened to our first two episodes, you'll know we covered the biggest lessons we learned from our own weddings with Shameless Media's Cindy Liu and our wedding regrets with podcaster and writer Jasmine Wallace.

0:43Today we have a very, very special guest, Andy Towner, the founder of The Bridal Journey, a global wedding media brand that covers the biggest bridal-based stories, trends and products. We're so happy to have you here, Andy. Welcome. I'm happy to be here. I don't think I've ever been more excited for an episode. I just set off mic before. Damn, why did I get married last year? We didn't run this episode last year because there are going to be so many amazing gems and insights. I adore following your page and your, you know, broader platforms. You've got a digital presence as well. Jo, I know you're the same.

1:15Absolutely. And when we were putting together this episode and we were thinking of like, what guests do we want for this round of this series? And I was like, Andy, Andy's got to be on. We have to have her. The bridal journey is like every person's go-to when it comes to starting to pull together what their wedding is going to look like. So we cannot wait to hear from you today.

1:34Andie Towner:Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I've been waiting. I've seen your wedding series and I'm like, when are they going to invite me on? So thank you so much. Don't worry, Andy. You've definitely been top of our list to invite onto the podcast. A few girls in the office had name dropped, myself included and Jo. So yes, we're very happy to have you here. So in today's episode, we'll be doing a bit of a deep dive into the biggest bridal trends for 2026 and beyond, according to Andy, of course. And we'll also be talking about bridal styling and Andy's journey to building the bridal journey, because I feel like a lot of people maybe aren't super familiar with this story, but I know we'll be very interested in it.

2:09Can we get a little bit of an elevator pitch from you on your own wedding, which I know was in 2021, and then how that ended up becoming the bridal journey and what your career is now?

2:20Andie Towner:Yes, well, my wedding was in COVID. So we were really capped at how many guests we could have. And we had 34 guests at a winery, very local to us, where my husband and I often went for lunch. And it was a huge party. We had a few guests drop out because I had COVID at the time. So yeah, it was a very small wedding. People said it was like 150 people were there. We partied all night. People were vomiting out of the bus on the way home. So it was like a big party and that's exactly kind of the feel that we wanted for our wedding. So it was a long time ago, many kids in between, but yeah. Would you have done it differently now that you have the bridal journey?

2:56Andie Towner:I don't think so. I probably would have kept it quite tight. And we said to ourselves, only invite friends that would be in your bridal party. So of course, friends were kind of left out. It wasn't like as big as what we'd hoped to be, but keeping it nice and tight was probably the perfect option for us. Sounds like an absolute hoot. I wish I was invited. And so now you have this, you know, massive brand being The Bridal Journey and I've seen you like share snapshots of the engagement that you get on your social channels as well and it's just huge. How did this come about? I think to go back to the start when I was a teenager, I mean, we didn't have much.

3:31Andie Towner:I was in a household with just my mum and often I got one little treat and it was a Vogue magazine or Harper's Bazaar or Elle and I mean, this was the time before social media. And I would collect all the magazines and keep them in a tub in the garage and often cut them up and reorganize them, put them into mood boards at the time. So I just love that, kind of had that real fascination for that entire world of magazines. I brought Grace Coddington's book. It was this huge orange hefty book that I would read. And she's actually the right-hand man to Anna Wintour. So she's their creative director.

4:04Andie Towner:And I would just read that. I love that entire world. And then fast forward till two year nine, I entered a modeling competition. I know you're probably looking at me being like, model. I see it. No, you're absolutely one of the most glamorous people I've ever seen. I love that she was trying to be sarcastic then and be like, yeah, no, actually no. No, thank you. And I entered this modeling competition at Chadston. It was sort of like Australia's Next Top Model. It was filmed on Arena TV on Foxtel. And they flew us to Sydney because I got into the finals and we had model bootcamp. It was aired on TV.

4:37Andie Towner:The cameras followed us around. And part of that was we were walking in Australian Fashion Week in Sydney for the launch of Vogue team. So we spent the day at the Vogue head office in Sydney and I got a fitting there and with a stylist and editors there and just loved that entire world. So that kind of really, I guess, pushed me into that entire magazine world. I absolutely loved it. A graphic design, I was always making my own magazine front covers and picking all the creative subjects at school. Then it hit year 12. And of course, you have your career guidance counsellor meeting and she smacks that big book and says, pick a career.

5:13Andie Towner:And at the time, coming from a small town, it was really unfathomable for me to move to Sydney and work in a magazine. It just wasn't, I think like now with social media and young girls, you have so many options. But at the time, that's just not something that I would have ever have done. My mum was a teacher and my dad actually a homicide detective. So I came from kind of this working class family who entered these government roles and I selected to be a teacher. So I went to university to study teaching whilst working at Manning Cartel in Sasson Bide. So I got a bit of a taste for fashion there and I also volunteered at all the Melbourne Fashion Weeks that I could, helping gaffer tape shoes and fit models into outfits.

5:52Andie Towner:I just loved it. So I did that on the side. And whilst at Sussan Bide, I mean, this is when Instagram just started. So I would walk through Chadston in my bright blue sheer dress with the orange nail polish, you know, that flurry and yellow. And you know, the silver metal belts and thinking my shit didn't stink, walking down Chadston, like this is amazing. And I worked with a friend and we started a blog called Snob. Now, Jo, you've mentioned Snob before on the podcast. and I was at the time rewinding back before Instagram. So this is like another world of Tumblr blogs and, you know, Harper and Harley, the blonde salad, they all hate us.

6:30Andie Towner:They were all around at the time and to get your fashion inspiration or mood boarding, you would go onto these blogs. You wouldn't access it via Instagram or Pinterest. It wasn't really a thing. You'd go on these blogs and you'd have a look. And so we started this blog called Snob and we got invited to all these events in Melbourne. It was very, very exciting. and we were starting to get gifting from brands, which really seems quite normal now. But at the time that just wasn't a thing. People weren't getting that. And we got advice from Roxy Jusenko at the time who said, you need to start getting your own content.

7:00Andie Towner:Like would love to sign you on because at the time we were getting a million hits a month to the website. Like it was huge. And Instagram had just launched and we built our Instagram up to 50 ,000 followers, which seems so small now. But when Instagram launched, it was huge. And at the time we had more followers and Al Ferguson's blog, They All Hate Us. It was big. Like people still stop me in bathrooms today and say, you know, did you have a blog called Snob? I did exactly that to you. I was like, where do I know you from? Yeah. Yeah, so it was big at the time. We got this advice to start creating our own content from Roxy Jisenko.

7:34Andie Towner:And at the time I was working at Manning Cartel and Nadia Bartel would come in and she had Chronicles of Nadia, I think it was called at the time. Yeah, I remember this. And she would come in and she would borrow outfits and go shoot them for the day and then bring them back at the end of the day and return it. And it's just something that we just didn't see the eye for at the time. We didn't know that this influencer world would really blow up. And at the time we had more followers than Elle Ferguson and they all hate us, but Elle started taking photos of herself in denim shorts in front of this semi-circle garage door and she blew up and we did it.

8:06Andie Towner:We just stayed very stagnant. I went into my teaching job, which was secure. You know, I got a weekly income and we just didn't run with it. So that's where the journey led me, no pun intended, to the bridal journey because at the time I really loved doing all that stuff. I was teaching and I just thought, you know, there's nothing really editorial out there for brides to be. It was all very traditional, what you were seeing. There were a lot of American style kind of blogs and I created the bridal journey. I am obsessed with this story because I did not know a lot of this and I don't think a lot of our listeners would as well.

8:41I also feel like at that time, it's funny you say like with the gift of hindsight and looking at how big profiles are now, particularly on Instagram and how many followers you had, that is insane in the early days. Can I ask a question? When it came to that decision to launch the bridal journey, why did you go into bridal? Why not stay in fashion?

9:03Andie Towner:I think because I traditionally know that I don't really have an eye for style, but I really loved mood boarding and storytelling. I think essentially marketing, I was, I had that more eye for that creativity rather than fashion itself. And at the time I just saw this demand for it. I obviously wasn't married or engaged, but knew I would be one day and I was like, this is what I need to create. I just saw a gap in the market at the time. I followed it well before I was engaged as well. And I think to your point, it's knowing it's going to come and it's good to kind of see what other people doing, it's also nice to have a little bit of a sticky babe.

9:36Andie Towner:Yes. I don't think you ever move past that. And especially, you know, we do pieces for mother-in-law dresses. And I think everyone's kind of involved with someone who's getting married, whether it's your little sister or yourself or a mom and your daughter's getting married. It's just a widespread audience that are really engaged and everyone kind of loves that storytelling piece behind a wedding and how, you know, what their wedding looked like. And we all love following that type of content, I think. There's also a bit of an intersection with branding and marketing. I'm seeing more of that as well.

10:06A lot of people taking inspiration for their weddings from wedding publications, but also branding activations and in reverse, because I'm constantly looking for sources of inspiration for when we do events or, you know, styling. And if we were to do an editorial feature, what does that look like? I often go to the bridal journey for that as well. So there is this really interesting cross section. Next, we'll be getting into the biggest bridal trends of 2026, but that will be right after a word from today's sponsor. There are milestones in life where only a diamond will do. Obviously, marriages are right at the top of the list.

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11:43Thank you so much to Michael Hill for making this episode of Stylish possible. So Andy, we hear a lot about wedding trends and I'm very interested to hear your predictions. What bridal trends do you predict will be big in 2026 and beyond? Because there'll be lots of brides planning for 2027 weddings as well.

12:02Andie Towner:So I firstly want to discuss the fashion side of things. I think the brides today are really fashion literate. So they're following the runway. I think we're looking at the fall 2026. So Simone Rocha, Kate, Loewe, Scaparalli. So I think the brides are really kind of going to that straight off the runway look. and right now the bridal wardrobe is a huge thing. So brides are opting in for like multiple looks across their wedding. So I think that's going to be a huge thing and often brides are starting to hire stylists to help them pull together an entire look for their wedding. So I think that's going to be a huge thing.

12:38Andie Towner:But when I said, you know, we're looking at looks straight from the runway into the wedding, I think this is going to be a whole new category, particularly with those vintage archival looks that are coming through. So we've just seen Margot Robbie off her press tour for Wuthering Heights and she wore a archival Galliano outfit at her press tour. So it was this razor sharp tailoring. So I think brides are really looking to what A is on the runway and B that archival fashion look, because we're often seeing, you know, Andrew Carmel, who is Margot Robbie's stylist. He's styling her in a lot of archival pieces and I've seen brides starting to do that too.

13:18Andie Towner:So Caro Tran, I don't know if you follow her. Yes, I do follow her. She's an influencer in Sydney and stylist. I interviewed her on the podcast. She got an archival piece. That is what she wanted to wear for our wedding. And I think a lot of brides are kind of opting in for something different that they're not seeing with a bit of history as well. It feels there is this shift to secondhand bespoke, looking for something that is entirely unique. I've also noticed a lot of pages popping up, people sourcing vintage archival dresses and offering them at a much more affordable price point as well. Do you have any recs on any pages or anyone who do that really well?

13:52Andie Towner:Do I ever? Here we go. A lot of them are overseas. I mean, you can probably dig around and find some. I know some brides are looking to Etsy. I had one bride who owns 1208 Vintage and she actually recreates pieces and she wore one for her wedding and actually brought a corset to wear over this like 60s style slip in that. it's not that ivory color it's more like that champagne-y look gorgeous so she brought like a yet modern corset and wore it over the slipped and looked amazing that's on the dress side of things and the fashion side of weddings any other trends that you're picking up for styling of weddings so I think with styling of weddings moving forward we're really going into that wedding branding and hyper personalization.

14:41Andie Towner:So I think, and Rhea, you can probably chat to this. I think brides are on social media, they're living on TikTok and they're seeing all these really cool brand of activations from events. And I think what brides are going to be doing is really personalizing their weddings with these really cool brand touch points. And I want to reference this wedding that we featured on the Bridal Journey. Their names were Sophia and Dan, and they had a two-part celebration. And I really loved this wedding because it was just entirely unique to them. So I had a Burning Man wedding. They got married in the desert and they had their guests like riding bikes.

15:13Andie Towner:It was like this Burning Man theme. It was like incredible. And then they had a second wedding and it was the theme of lucid dreaming. So it was like you were entering this lucid dream and the guests were in sparkles and bright colours. And it was at this kaleidoscope garden, like this amazing garden. And they had bubble guns on the dance floor. So it was just this really cool theme and this Y2K feeling to their wedding. And I don't know what it is because I couldn't find anything written about it, but they had this bar where they were making like these, they had like these takeaway big slushy cups and they were kind of rolling, they had all these activations, they were rolling like this amazing sprinkle design and giving out these drinks.

15:54Andie Towner:And it was just like all really like personalized and branding to who they were as a couple. So I think that moving forward, I think brides kind of are planning a day for an experience rather than performative. So rather than being like very performative and doing the champagne tower, they're looking to really entertain their guests with these touch point moments. Make it really integrated. It's interesting seeing a move away from this traditional wedding culture as well. And that copy paste wedding, like people are really trying to create this bespoke experience. You also can do that on so many different budgets.

16:27A few of my friends are really leaning into their goal is for their wedding to be a party. So they're actually omitting a lot of those traditional formats of a wedding, whether that be a father daughter dance, you know, even traditional ceremonies, little things like that to make it feel really unique and bespoke feels like it's popping up a lot more.

16:46Andie Towner:Yeah. And I mean, you don't have to do any of that stuff. And I think I fell into the trap of this when planning my own wedding was you feel like you need to do those things like the first dance and have like I had my mum walk me down the aisle and I carried my daughter because she was one and I think you get stuck into thinking that you need to do all this stuff but ultimately at the end of the day I think the celebrant needs to say some particular words and you need to sign the document that's all you need to do so I think like brides moving forward are going to create like these fun branding experience and touch points to their wedding for instance you know having cake people rolling out a tray and like delivering cake out of a thing or ice cream or experiences throughout the wedding or personalizing it to them as a couple.

17:27Andie Towner:And another example, I interviewed Georgie from After The Rock. She's a wedding planner in Sydney. She has five weddings a year or something and nothing's under like a million dollars. It's insane. Very like niche planner, mind you. And you know, she does these weddings that are always different to who the couple is. And she often says when planning weddings with clients is to look at things that you and your husband love. So do you like going to this Italian restaurant or what music do you like? What does your house look like? And then they build the wedding around that as a couple. So I think that's something that people need to think about is who you are as a couple and how to bring that into your wedding.

18:03Andie Towner:That's a great tip. We've been talking about wedding content a lot over the past few episodes and how there's been a shift to different types of content you can create at a wedding. And we're seeing the rise of lo-fi content. Do you think that trend will continue or what other trends are you seeing when it comes to capturing content specifically at weddings? Yes, 100%. I think gone are the days of those post stage photos. I myself, when I'm choosing to feature a wedding, will often get photos from the guests because I think they, I go into the tag photos and I'll select random little videos in posts and that's the content that tends to perform the best on my own channel and I think that's what people want to see they don't want to see anything overly staged by a photographer and I think that's why there's a rise of content creators the guests and the bridesmaids get amazing content I interviewed the founders of guest pics and it's a platform where people take photos and all get shared into one album and I think that's going to be like the content creation moving forward is guests are going to be creating the content for the couple I don't know if I could trust all my guests to get the content for my wedding.

19:09Andie Towner:Wow, I know, after a couple of drinks. It depends who the guests are. My dad with his foreign landscape. I will toot my own horn here. I feel I would be a very good guest to capture weddings. Same, but I don't know that every guest would be cut out for that. Okay, so just to go back to dresses, because obviously that is one of the most important things of the day. What dress styles, silhouettes, fabrics do you think is set to dominate for wedding dresses in 2026, 2027? I know that you go to New York for that bridal fashion. When is that, by the way? That's in two weeks. Yeah, I was going to say, it's normally the start of the year.

19:45I'm panicking a little bit internally about that one.

19:48Andie Towner:Yes. Well, you'll probably have more insights after that, but what are you seeing now in terms of not even just bridal gowns, but also bridesmaids dresses and mother of the bride, mother of the groom dressing? Yeah, well, I definitely think that princess gown is losing dominance. Again, what I said earlier about bride selecting things that they're seeing Margot Robbie wear, or we're getting inspiration from the runway and what they're serving there. So I think moving forward, that architecturally sculpted corset look is going to be in. It's not going away with that kind of 18th century cinching, you know, that really fully constructed waistline.

20:23Andie Towner:And when we're looking at the history of wedding gowns, it's always been that traditional look and feel that haven't been necessarily the trendiest thing. It's not like you're looking at Schiaparelli and there's a wedding dress, but I think we're kind of blurring the lines between the two. So if you're looking at the runway content, perhaps what Margot Robbie's wearing on her Wuthering Heights tour, I think that's really going to start filtering down to wedding dresses and that whole bridal wedding wardrobe look. So it's going to be a shift away from kind of that clean, modern default. And we're going to see a lot of like that texture, history narrative moving forward with the silhouettes and that corsetry and the silhouette and the shape is going to be the statement.

21:03It feels quite regal, very Bridgerton-esque.

21:05Andie Towner:Very, really Bridgerton. You've seen like Bridgerton come out, Wuthering Heights. I think people are going to really lean into what they're seeing in like that pop culture and they're going to be trend driven by that. I've also noticed a shift away from that traditional white. You touched on champagne before. I actually wore champagne for my second outfit, which was a corset skirt, but I'm seeing a lot more dresses pop up on social media that are leaning more into that off-white champagne colour. Is that going away or is that staying? Although the Pantone colour is Cloud Dancer, isn't it, this year, which is like a stark white.