While planning her London wedding, HAX founder Hattie Glendenning designed looks for her groom, her parents, her bridesmaids, and several more guests—in addition to crafting her own two-piece cream silk set embellished with vintage glass buttons.While planning her London wedding, HAX founder Hattie Glendenning designed looks for her groom, her parents, her bridesmaids, and several more guests—in addition to crafting her own two-piece cream silk set embellished with vintage glass buttons.
Hattie Glendenning was nearing the end of a month-long work trip in New York when she received a text from a friend she used to work with. He’d heard she was in New York and, funnily enough, so was he. “We met up for martinis at Lucky Strike, where I’d been going every evening, feeling sad because I’d recently broken up with my boyfriend,” says Hattie. “An hour in, I realized it was a date.” They spent the whole weekend together, and by Sunday, Harry confessed: he wasn’t meant to be in the city at all. He had flown to New York in hopes of seeing her.
The pair first met six years earlier, while they were both working at the flower delivery company Freddie’s Flowers, but Hattie had a boyfriend at the time. “I was aware that Harry potentially fancied me, but it was a bit of a joke in the office.” Later, when he found out she was single, Harry took his chance. “Something in him knew it would be something great,” she says.
After they flew back to England in March 2020—one week before lockdown—Harry began to feel ill and discovered he had caught Covid. Fearing she must have caught it too, and wanting to protect her father due to his lung condition, Hattie moved out from her parents’ south London home and in with Harry. “Two weeks of isolation turned into four months,” she says.
That period firmly cemented their relationship—one that would encourage Hattie to pursue her dream of setting up her own tailoring business. She established HAX just off Savile Row in 2023, and has since made suits for clients including Cynthia Erivo, Naomi Ackie, and Bill Nighy. Harry now works for the business, too.
In December 2023, Harry took Hattie to Glebe House in Devon, and proposed while she was in the bath with a custom ring made by jeweler Clarice Price Thomas: matte gold with an east-west setting and near-Victorian loop detailing. “Within a few minutes of being giddy and realising what was happening, I suddenly felt like everything had changed,” Hattie says.
It took her “half an hour of Pinterest research” in the car on the way home to work out what she wanted to make for her wedding outfit. “I saw this dress from a ’90s runway reference that I just loved. It felt really relaxed—short sleeves, a slit through the body. I knew I didn’t want anything lace or pouffy.” From there it was a question of sourcing the right fabric. The bride found it while picking up cloth for a client at a fabric shop: a pleated cream silk, “not quite Issey Miyake—it looks like tree bark, imperfect soft pleats.” She bought it a year before the wedding and tucked it away.
When Hattie—who was also behind the looks she and Harry wore for their legal ceremony back in March—asked her four girlfriends to be her bridesmaids, she told them she’d love to make them a custom HAX piece in whatever fabric and style they liked. The consultations began at the bachelorette party: after breakfast at The Wolseley with a core group of friends, she took them back to her studio to start the design process over several bottles of champagne.
It didn’t stop there. The bride also offered to make her childhood friend Celeste Sykes, who would act as the celebrant, an outfit, as well as dressing her sisters, her parents, her father- and brother-in-law, several more friends, and her groom. Hattie says working on all the custom designs provided cherished moments of intimacy with her friends and family before the big day. “It was a really lovely series of moments that really brought us closer and allowed us to get excited together.”
Hattie’s girlfriends all love color, she says, “so they each chose their favorite color in 12 ½ oz linen and I sketched out styles.” One wanted a three-piece suit, another copied a loose-fitting suit in a style Hattie often wears, another had a Jackie O-style minidress in mind, and the fourth wanted a high-neck top with buttons up the back, with matching trousers and shawl. “My favorite thing was making my friends feel amazing,” says the bride. “They’d come in for a fitting, we’d have some drinks, then I’d basically force them all to hang out.”
Harry’s brother requested a single-breasted suit in a navy Loro Piana seersucker fabric, and his father a lightweight blue linen, while Hattie’s own father, Simon (who, as a director of the British cloth merchant Dugdale Bros & Co, is a veteran suit wearer), chose a navy wool, worn with braces. The groom had a touching reference point: a picture he’d seen of Hattie’s grandfather wearing a grey suit on his wedding day. In the end he opted for a dark brown 10oz tropical wool in a double-breasted style, with a wide lapel, and straight-leg trousers with a slightly higher rise. His wife-to-be also made him a cream shirt, and found a vintage Celine tie on Vinted for $50. His father gifted him a pearl tie pin to complete the look.
Perhaps inevitably, given how busy she was making everyone else’s outfits, Hattie’s own main bridal look almost came unstuck. “I stupidly left my dress pretty late—my fitting was two weeks before.” Her design was a high-necked jacket—fastened with 48 vintage glass buttons discovered on a sourcing trip at Sunbury Antiques Market—that opened to expose her midriff, and a long, flowing skirt. But the jacket sleeves turned out to be uncomfortably tight, leaving her with a decision to make: either chop the sleeves off, or “we had a tiny bit of extra fabric…” In the end, HAX’s alterations tailor turned them into “amazing bell sleeves,” and the fix turned out to be a perfect save. “I should have done it from the beginning,” the bride says now. “It turned out to be amazing.”
There was another near disaster when, two weeks out from the wedding, the couple learned their venue couldn’t accommodate them. But a friend offered an alternative: a derelict gymnasium behind his house, filled with 60 years’ worth of debris, rubble, and old possessions. “Thank God we have extremely useful friends—one is a builder. He came along with some of his team and we cleared it all out and knocked an archway through our friend’s garden.” It was another change of plan that worked out for the best. “It was really, really beautiful, and we were so touched by how amazing our friends had been. It was a lovely way to go into our marriage.”
Hattie’s friend Celeste, dressed in her custom HAX opera coat, led the ceremony at Chelsea Physic Garden, and recalled how, on a holiday in Menorca 16 years earlier, as she and Hattie were bobbing in the sea on a pedalo, she had predicted that a boyfriend would one day replace her in Hattie’s life. “And now I’m up here marrying you two,” she told the couple, as the bride fought to hold back tears.
Drinks in the garden followed, and Harry gave his speech before lunch. “He has a very dry sense of humor, so he opened by confessing to being the person who started Covid-19—he came to New York, took me on a date and started it, so that I would then quarantine in his house with him.”
Lunch was served at three long tables laid with gingham tablecloths and napkins that Hattie made from fabric she sourced on a trip to India, and later turned into café curtains for her home and napkin sets she gifted to friends. The bride’s mother, Liz, a photographer, bought the flowers from Covent Garden Flower Market the day before and arranged them in huge urns by the altar, along with putting together her daughter’s bridal bouquet.
Guests then piled onto Routemaster buses to head to the party at the gymnasium, where two of the couple’s friends DJed and a soul band played. There was no official first dance (“the music started playing and everyone just started dancing”), but the floor was full until the final song of the night—Cher’s “Believe”—with Hattie and Harry singing from their positions on top of their friends’ shoulders. Remembering the moment now, the bride says: “We looked at each other and thought: ‘We’ve pulled this off.’”
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Photo: Studio Amalur 1/33My dad and I arrived early and found a bench by the river, and my bridesmaids joined with champagne. We’ll remember that bridge forever.
Just before I walked down the aisle.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 3/33Walking down the aisle with my dad. I also made his suit. The veil was a very last-minute addition. I just thought, when else will I ever get to wear one?
My bridesmaids just before they walked down the aisle. Each chose a different colour of 12oz linen in their own design. It was so important to me that they felt like themselves, and left with something they’d actually wear again.
The bridesmaids just before walking down the aisle. We added mother-of-pearl buttons to each of their outfits to bring the whole look together.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 6/33The bridesmaids walking down the aisle, all in HAX Tailoring.
Our friend Celeste performed our ceremony. She was there the night we got together, so there was truly no one else who could have done it. It made the whole thing incredibly special.
My sisters delivering their address during the ceremony. We made both their outfits: a gingham suit with cropped jacket and flared trousers for Alice, and a silk dress with a V-neck and vents for Flo.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 9/33Leaving the ceremony. Harry wore a HAX brown lightweight wool suit.
With my niece, Kit, after the ceremony.
Celeste and I at the reception. We designed Celeste a floor-length shantung silk overcoat with a matching minidress underneath. The coat was inspired by an opera coat.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 12/33Wedding dress detailing. I chose a pleated cream silk for the skirt and jacket, with vintage 1930s glass buttons I found at Kempton Market—42 of them running down the front.
My sisters and I—all of us in custom HAX Tailoring.
Guest Nico in his HAX custom suit, inspired by a suit Rod Stewart wore in the ’70s.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 15/33Our nieces and nephews. We decided against making custom pieces—they grow so fast—so instead they wore the sweetest little cotton Zara dresses.
India, who works with me at HAX, in shantung silk corseted trousers with a matching cami and shawl, each piece dyed to exactly the same shade of brown.
Me with my bridesmaids in their HAX custom pieces.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 18/33Guests in HAX Tailoring.
Harry delivering his groom’s speech. He wore a brown double-breasted suit in 10oz lightweight wool, with high-rise pleated trousers.
My sister and bridesmaids.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 21/33The ceremony took place in Chelsea Physic Garden.
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Guests at drinks.
Name places hand-painted by a friend, with napkins and tablecloths made from a beautiful cotton I found on a fabric-sourcing trip.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 24/33It was peony season, so my mum and dad went to the flower market the day before—we picked them up just as they were opening.
Lunch and speeches at Chelsea Physic Garden.
The guests piled onto old Routemaster buses after the meal.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 27/33Onto our old Routemaster buses, headed to the after-party.
A friend volunteered the derelict gymnasium in his garden when the couple’s wedding venue fell through at the last minute.
Bride and groom on the bus. We handed everyone a Campari soda for the journey.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 30/33En route to the reception.
After-party venue, in our friend’s old gymnasium building.
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After-party: we had a soul band play before our friends DJ-ed.
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Photo: Studio Amalur 33/33The dancefloor was full until the final tune.
