Project Wedding Dress

Oh, hi there.  Remember me?  Yeah, I tried to blog a bit more then fell off the face of the earth.  However, I am back because I want to tell you all about the pretty wedding dress I'm making. The pictures will be a bit deceiving because I won't share the finished product until after February 5th, but you can see some of the process up until then.

So: this summer, after Lance proposed and I accepted, and after I tried on a few dresses and decided that most things related to commercial weddings made me twitch and itch a little (I think I'm allergic), I decided to make my own dress.  This Vogue pattern (originally from 1954!) caught my eye and stuck with me.

So very vintage! With a scooped neck, a full skirt, and a low back!  These features drew me toward it.  I bought the pattern, then began the practice dress (to make sure the final version would fit before I attempted it).  Finals occurred, followed by the holidays (and another wedding to attend), so I finally got around to working on after Christmas.  And...it turned out so well:

Well, it would look better if you could see me in it, but you can get the general idea.

So, now that the practice dress is (mostly) done (sans buttons and hemming), I decided to make several modifications to the pattern.  There are buttons on the front, but I am moving those to the back.  I'm also adding lace.  I'm also making the whole dress out of a second-hand dress given to me, so I'm incorporating fun beading into the skirt (that I don't have to do!).  Here's the dress I chopped up for parts:

And a close-up of the skirt/beading:

Gotta love recycling!

I'll go into more detail about the modifications I made (and how I did it), but I'm feeling reasonably confident in my sewing skills as of late.  Luckily, I do have an awesome seamstress to help me hem it because that's my sewing weakness: my hems always look like a home-ec project whereas the rest of the dress usually looks really great.  Guess I'll be working on that skill next!

Next wedding project (after the dress is completed): wedding vests for the boys.