All About the Dress

About 3 or 4 years ago, I was dating a guy that I thought I may actually want to marry.  I had always thought about what my wedding dress would look like but I had never looked for it.  Around that time, I did some web browsing for pictures and saved them.  When I went home to visit family, I went over to my grandma’s house and we sketched out my wedding dress.  I was planning on having a seamstress make it for me.  I wanted a dress with a dropped waistline and a layered skirt.  I also wanted a square neck with a Queen Anne-like collar.  The biggest challenge about my dress was I wanted to be able to wear it in the temple for the wedding.  I knew that the wedding dresses had to be long sleeved so my plan was to have a slightly longer short sleeve and have a sleeve that attached to it using hook and eyes and have a satin ribbon/bow to cover where the eyes were on the sleeve.  I was happy with my sketch when we were finished.  Unfortunately, I ended up breaking up with the guy I was dating so my sketch went into a box. 

When I got engaged to Rory, I got to start the process all over.  Fortunately, my taste had not changed much and I still had my drawing.  I originally was going to have someone make the dress for me but I decided that was going to be more work that I wanted so I went dress shopping.  I looked at all the dress warehouses and tried on multiple styles of dresses.  I liked the ruffled dresses but there was still something about the simplicity of the layered skirts that I loved.  After I was done dress shopping I knew what I wanted and it was no surprise that it was exactly what I had sketched years earlier.  Problem was, I was on a budget and wasn’t willing to spend $700-$1000 on a dress only to have it altered and spend another several hundred.  During my quest to find a dress I found a alterations shop.  I stopped in to ask them how much they would charge to build up a strapless dress.  They gave me a price quote of $200.

So, I went hunting online.  I found several websites that sold dresses at great deals.  The only problem with online sites is there is no way to tell the quality of the dress you are viewing.  I searched tons of sites and finally decided to bite the bullet and order a dress online.  I found a layered skirt that I loved and a bodice that looked pretty and easy enough to build up.  I could have paid to have it “tailored” to me by giving them my measurements but I opted not to.  Part of me thinks I should have but it all worked out.  I ordered my standard size and put a rush on the order.  I was home when the dress arrived a few weeks later.  It came in an vacuum sealed package so it seemed much smaller than I was expecting.  At first I was slightly disappointed because I didn’t particularly care for the fabric the dress was made out of.  I am sure that if I had paid more attention that I would have expected it.  The dress was made out of white taffeta.  It wasn’t a horrible fabric, I just preferred the silk or a polyester. 

That day I printed out my photo and set out to the tailor to get my dress fixed.  I wasn't really how they were going to accomplish what I wanted but thought a photo of hwat I liked would help.  This is what they had to go off of.  I went to Elegant Reflections in Mesa, AZ.  I found a couple of reviews online about them from a few other LDS brides who said they did an amazing job altering dresses so you couldn’t even tell.  It was the end of December and I need my dress by mid-February.   Surprisingly, the dress fit reasonably well as is.  There were a couple of places where they needed to take it in around the hips and waistline but that could be expected from a dress that was made in China using standard measurements.  I also paid a fraction of the price I would have paid if I bought the dress here locally, even if it was one of the bridal warehouses so I was expecting to have to make some adjustments.  The lady in the shop pinned my dress where they needed to take it in and pinned where I wanted my neckline to start. I was really going on faith at this point in hoping that the woman who was adding to my dress would be able to envision a way to make it look like the dress had always been that way.

The next time I went in for a fitting, I took Jayna, my dad's wife.  It was fun to have her go along and be part of the wedding fun.  It was a very basic fitting to make sure they were putting everything in the right place before they started stitching.  It was a good thing because I told them I wanted butterfly sleeves when I was actually thinking about a tulip sleeve. BIG DIFFERENCE!  I tried the dress on with my shoes and we found that the dress was a perfect length. You cand see where they started to place the the lining. 

I had several fittings after that to make adjustments and make sure everything was progressing like I wanted.  I was so impressed with their work.  The seamstress who was building up my dress was matching the fold pattern on the front on the bodice area to make it look like it flowed all the way up to my neckline.  They left the back plain but matched the pattern on the lace and bead work.  The original zipper on my dress broke and needed to be replaced but it was a simple fix.  The day finally came when it was time to take the dress home.  The only reason why I you could tell that it had been altered was because the dress would sometimes creep up from my moving around.  Otherwise, everything looked like the dress always had sleeves.  I ended spending about $400 on my dress with the alterations.  It was definitely worth it in my opinion. When I think back to my sketch, it's not the same but it follows the same exact idea.