Wedding Dress Pt 1: Design & Style
I am the kind of person who loves a good challenge.
Months before we were even officially engaged, I had already been thinking about how fun making a wedding dress would be such a big, juicy, fun problem to solve. I thought, “what’s the big deal anyway? It’s just a dress. I make pretty enough dresses all the time.” And a wedding dress could be something as simple, or complicated as I wanted.
Jason and I got engaged on an afternoon in April 2021 on a hike with some dear friends. It was a lovely surprise after nearly six years together and launched me into this fun journey.
What I THOUGHT I wanted
I loved reading through the experiences of other sewists who made their own dresses (favorites being Kat Makes, Untitled Thoughts, Seamingly Sarah, and others). I went in thinking that I wanted simple, elegant, understated, minimal tulle and puff, just an off white satin or traditional lace. Let me just give you a little spoiler alert - that’s not what I ended up with 😂
Learnings from the shops
The first logical step is to go “shopping” in stores and see RTW pieces.
Even though I’m making mine, my biggest fear is to invest all this time into something that’s unflattering or that’s better as an idea than reality. So putting on and holding dresses helped me figure out what I really like, and I got to ask a lot of questions about couture dress construction and fit for my body type.
Like how the most flattering straps hit at the end of my collar bones, framing them. That heavy fabrics can require bodice boning to hold the structure of a dress. How there was often power mesh in the bodice for modesty. How the skirt flare should start a little below my finger tips with arms down.
These poor shop gals out here had no idea I could tell who knew what they were talking about, and who was bs-ing 😆 I studied the construction of the garments and materials. Felt a little bad that I didn’t intend on buying their dresses, but after all most women I know go to 3 or 4 shops, so really this wasn’t that bad a practice.
Dream vs Reality
I was surprised to learn that more modern embellishments appealed to me. I was shocked when I loved a sequined piece that my friend jokingly grabbed and deemed “The Vegas Dress” - which was actually not tacky at all and was my favorite style. I would’ve never thought I’d want a beaded/sequined dress until I tried it on. There' weren’t many beaded options available for try on, but I loved the ornate nature of those fabrics and pieces. So extra and elegant. The clear and white beads and sequins helped it feel like it wasn’t too much.
I thought I had wanted to go so understated, but your girl put on this dress and just wanted to shine like a ✨DISCO BALL✨. No joke fam, it just hit me out of the blue, the need to sparkle 😆 I couldn’t have seen her coming. It is one of my only excuses after all to ever get to take up so much space in such a loud (is it loud?) garment. So, we’re doing it.
The Vegas Dress itself. It was a sample from Made With Love Bridal I think.
So it was decided.
I loved the silhouettes with angles - deep Vs, angled low backs. I loved a little hip hugging action that shows a little shape, but not too sexy (I am built fairly slim and straight, so not too much worry of shocking the crowd with any goods).
The shape itself is sleek and elegant, its just the fabric that needs to be 1000% glamorous and tasteful. It was decided. My first choice would be the deep v-neck bodice that I hadnt tried before, something to figure out. Option B was a bias cut cowl neck dress as a backup, since I’d seen patterns for that and knew I could do that more easily.
Up next: Part Two: Fabric Selection.