Each week the Herald will be featuring a local business and this week we hear from sister-in-laws Tracy Kensdale & Stefanie Churchill-Matthews of Keeping It Vintage.

Each week the Herald will be featuring a local business and this week we hear from sister-in-laws Tracy Kensdale and Stefanie Churchill-Matthews of Keeping It Vintage.

Tell us about yourself.

Stef and I are sisters-in-law and both live in Tipton St John. The business started after Stef’s wedding to my sister Tori. They collected a large amount of vintage china and props, after the wedding they kept getting asked to hire it and so we set up the hire business. When bookings started flying in, Tracy left her part-time job to run Keeping It Vintage full time and then a year later Stef has done the same. Stef is married to Tori who helps make some of the props we have, along with Tracy’s husband Paul. Their mum also helps by hand-dying silk table runners – so this really is a family business.

Tell us about your business.

Keeping It Vintage started out as a vintage hire company, however we have evolved into a wedding and event hire company specialising in luxury tableware, décor and props. We offer a hire only service, a hire and setup service and also a full styling package.

What makes you different?

We try to source items that are not readily available in the area, such as our gold cutlery. We were the first company in the South West to be able to offer this for hire. We also bought in gorgeous jewel coloured glassware that is really popular and isn’t available for hire anywhere else in the area. We are also proud of our customer service, we won a ‘highly commended’ award two years in a row at The Wedding Industry Awards, having won the Best Newcomer award during the first year of our business. The feedback we received from clients was very heart-warming.

Tell us something that might surprise us.

Last year we washed over 12,000 pieces of cutlery by hand!

What’s one of the oddest stories you have?

One of the strangest hire items we have supplied is a vintage laboratory centrepiece for a client who was a junior doctor. We borrowed a tripod, gauze and clamp stand from St Johns School for the wedding!