Review – A Vintage Wedding by Katie Fforde

By | February 3, 2015

In a small Cotswold country town, Beth, Lindy and Rachel are looking for new beginnings.

So they set up in business, organising stylish and perfectly affordable vintage weddings.

Soon they are busy arranging other people’s Big Days.

What none of them know is that their own romances lie waiting, just around the corner …

Every so often, there’s something wonderfully pleasurable about setting aside the latest psychological thriller or challenging literary “must read”, and escaping into the world that Katie Fforde creates so well. A Vintage Wedding is Katie’s 21st novel and is published by Century (Random House) on 12th February in hardback and e-book formats. 

If you’ve read any of the author’s books before, this one will delight you, delivering everything you are expecting and hoping for. I’m a bit of a Katie Fforde fan – you’ll have seen my blog tour feature last year for The Perfect Match. But if you’ve never read her books before, and like your reading deliciously light, with romance, thoroughly likeable characters (and some you might like less), some twists and turns, a beautiful Cotswold setting, light touches of humour and a heart-warming story, you really can’t do much better. 

Lindy is a single parent, struggling financially while bringing up her two young boys but surrounded by her supportive family. Beth is jobless, staying in a gifted holiday let while working out how she can turn her life around, escaping from her controlling mother, and organising her sister’s wedding. Rachel works as a self-employed accountant, living in her perfect white home (“wevet” on the Farrow and Ball paint chart), not lighting her wood burning stove for fear of spoiling its perfection, sleeping between pristine high threadcount white sheets and polishing her white bath. 

But when rough-round-the-edges Raff delivers Rachel a load of logs, Charlie from the farm sells Beth a slightly smelly van for £300, and the girls decide to set up their enterprise organising on-the-cheap weddings, things are about to change for them all. Throw into the mix a dilapidated church hall and an unexpected brush with the music industry, add a surrounding community who pull together to provide support, reintroduce Beth’s horrendous mother – and you have everything you need for a really lovely read and a few hours’  total feel-good escapism. 

My thanks to netgalley and the publishers for my advance reading e-copy.


Katie lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire with her husband, some of her three children and many pets. Recently her old hobbies of ironing and housework have given way to singing, flamenco dancing and husky racing. She claims this keeps her fit. Katie has an excellent website where you can find out more about the author and her books, and she is also active on Facebook and Twitter.