five hours in birmingham

On Saturday I dragged my three lovely (not to mention patient) bridesmaids to Birmingham all in aid of the search for a pretty special dress...

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Upon arrival, we headed away from the bull ring and city centre in search of The Custard Factory - once the old Bird's factory but now home to a collection of delightful little independent businesses including Le Keux Vintage Salon (we only peeked through the window but it looked fabulous), Urban Village (packed full of vintage clothing and accessories at seriously good prices - nothing like the ridiculously marked up stuff you get in London), Yumm (a v.cutesy little deli where they called out our names when our drinks were ready) and, most importantly, The Couture Company, specialisers in unique bridal dresses. My pinterest board is full of their designs so it was great to finally try some on!

After the appointment we headed back towards the centre and on the way stopped by Cow Vintage. This shop was a gold mine *ahem* we were in there for nearly an hour and it's really not that big. The clothes were ace and also incredibly well priced. I picked up a dress for £15 and a checked shirt for £6.50! Bragainous non? Oh, and another thing, their changing rooms were super sweet too. When we were finally able to drag ourselves away (with several purchases between us) we had just enough time to grab something to eat in the bull ring and make our way back to the station.

Cow changing rooms

Izy: found a pretty mental hat at Cow vintage

El: in mint framed specs at Urban Village

My sister: doing her best Velma impression

Me: modeling my shirt from Cow

I think Birmingham is sometimes the butt of quite a few jokes, especially from Londoners (myself included), but this weekend I discovered that there's a lot more to it and parts of it are pretty cool. If you'd like to see for yourself you might like to know that it's only an hour and half by train from euston and our tickets were £15 return each (not bad eh?) from thetrainline.com. I'm quite up for exploring more UK cities this year as there's still SO many I've never been to. Perhaps Manchester next...