This York bridal designer launches beautiful new wedding dress collection inspired by Shakespearean heroines

“I’ve wanted to do a sort of Shakespearean influenced collection for years, but it never really felt the right time,” says the brand’s designer and founder, Hayley Neil. “So I've been ruminating upon it for a long time.”

The result of all this rumination is The Juliet range of historically-influenced, ethically sourced and utterly beautiful bridal gowns, dresses, separates and jumpsuits, all designed and hand-crafted at the Rolling in Roses studio and boutique in York, by Hayley and her small team of seamstresses. “I really wanted to do a couple of more structured dresses, boned bodices and slightly drop-waisted with the point centre front and centre back, which obviously comes from the Elizabethan era,” she says. “There are a lot of influences from Shakespearean period dress in the collection, whether that's the shape of the neckline or a shape of the waistline, little details like that. There's a sleeve we've done that’s like a puff sleeve, but it’s got almost like a Jacobean ruff detail around the cuff.”

Hayley trained in Costume Design at Edinburgh College of Art, then worked for theatrical costume-makers Homburgs in Leeds before becoming a freelance costume designer for theatre, film and TV (she worked on The King’s Speech).

“The skill sets that I've had to use doing costume over the years in theatre and film mean that, if I want to draw upon that, then I can just suddenly do a boned bodice,” she says.

She first realised that there was a gap in the market for an alternative to high street bridalwear while on a shopping trip to find a ’60s prom-style wedding dress for her sister, Kate.

In 2012, she opened her first boutique, Glory Days, in York, offering vintage bridal gowns as well as creating one-off wedding dresses. A growing desire for relaxed, non-traditional wedding gowns saw her found her Rolling In Roses label in 2016 (the name comes from an early poem by punk icon Patti Smith).

Brides travel from across the country. “Especially now I've got a few structured ones as well as the looser, more relaxed bias-cut ones,” Hayley says.

“We get loads of brides up from London coming for appointments and down from up north. And we get a lot of different styles of weddings, from the really chic city brides to the relaxed festival, tent-in-a-field brides, and also a big age range as well - we've had a lot of older brides recently, which has been great.”

Weddings have changed. “There's less expectation to do the traditional day,” Hayley says. “It's really nice that brides feel a lot more confident in doing what they want to do and wearing what they want to wear.”

But it has been quite a turbulent time for the wedding industry, she says, which saw a boom in the year after the pandemic, followed by a major dip. One theory is that, on average, the time between meeting someone, falling in love, getting engaged and married is around two or three years. With potential brides and grooms not meeting each other during the pandemic, there followed a gap of a year or two when there were very few engagements, and resulting marriages.

“It seems to be slowly picking up again now,” says Hayley. “I know a lot of businesses that didn’t survive it.”

Originally from Snaith in East Yorkshire, Hayley is married to Matthew, and they have two little boys. She and her team (Ellis, Sophie and Rebecca) host bridal appointments, as well as make the designs, all at the Micklegate premises.

Rolling in Roses won Best British Bridal Designer 2024 at the Weddings & Honeymoons Magazine awards, and the Sustainability award at the Bridal Buyer Awards. “We got highly commended last month at the Sustainable Wedding Awards,” Hayley says.

It’s important that all RIR fabrics are sustainably and ethically produced. There is a new sustainable brocade made in Italy with bio silk, and an organic silk hemp blend, used on the Juliet dress.

“We are always talking to people about wearing things again,” Hayley says. “We've got a lot of separates, which can be worn again anyway, and we’ve shortened dresses for quite a few brides after the wedding.

“Most of our fabrics take dye really well because they are all natural fibres. We've been doing dye tests.”

Ideally, brides should leave six months or more before the wedding. “But we can and do rush orders because we make everything here,” she says.

The images here from the photoshoot for the Juliet Collection took place at the Guildhall in York for the interior shots, and at York Museum Gardens for the exteriors. Both are wedding venues, within a few minutes of Hayley’s boutique and studio.

There are now European stockists of Rolling in Roses, as well as stockists around the UK (the shops buy samples for brides to try on, then get them made to order). Next month, she is exhibiting at Barcelona Bridal Week.

From the sparkling floor-length Ophelia dress to the cowl-neck Hermia mini dress, from the Desdemona jumpsuit to the Titania corset, these are designs for modern, free-thinking brides who care deeply about where and how their wedding outfit is made.

And in case, like me, you were wondering where the goddess Juno appears as a character in Shakespeare, it’s in The Tempest, in a play within a play, in which she says: “Honour, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you.”

rollinginroses.co.uk