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My Wedding Dress
It started with my mom
This dress was first worn by my mother at her wedding in 1991. She kept it preserved all these years and I was lucky enough to be able to rewear it for my own wedding.
Trying it on
With a nearly perfect fit, it was ready for some modernization and personalization. As luck would have it, Basque waists (lowered v-shaped waist lines) were in style again, so I knew I would preserve that feature.
Creating the vision
The first task was disassembling the dress into a separate skirt, bodice, and sleeves. All the beading and lace appliqué was machine stitched with invisible thread - so this part took hours of careful work to undo. Next was removing the features I no longer wanted. Then reimagining the sleeves as three-quarter length fitted sleeves with lace matched to the shoulders so it looked like they flowed right off.
A special detail I added was cartridge pleats on the waist of the skirt. This style of pleats is from the 1800’s and features tightly packed voluminous pleats. Being a new technique, it took me three tries of handing sewing all the pleats to get them exactly right.
The final look
And just like a fairy tale dream, the dress was perfect! The day was made all the more special wearing my mother’s dress, altered by my own two hands.
And now to be carefully packed away again so it can be recreated another time in the future…