Ever since I was a kid I was sketching what type of wedding dress I would wear when I was all grown up and getting married. I sort of knew even then that I wanted to design my own, because since I’m such a cheapy I would never be able to stomach the immense guilt over spending thousands of dollars on a single piece of clothing to only be worn once. (Unless I became a movie star and my priorities changed!) Once I hit my mid-teens, I had kind of settled on the design: form-fitting, fishtail, long silvery-satin with a low-cut back.

But then I did get married – Hub and I married in a civil ceremony when I was 26. We both wanted to take some time and plan a beautiful wedding, we wanted to save up some money, and we wanted both our families to be in attendance, and it just wasn’t possible at the time, so we made it legal but put off having an “official” wedding until the timing was better. Then, a year later, I found out I was pregnant, and suddenly we had to plan a wedding super-quick since I refused to walk down the aisle “showing,” if you know what I mean.;-) The question of the wedding dress was still in my head, and form-fitting, silvery-white, low-cut back seemed now totally inappropriate considering the circumstances (plus I was worried showing that much skin at my wedding would scandalize the inlaws). I had seen a photo of Gwen Stefani’s Galliano gown from her wedding – the one with the pink ombre at the hem – and thought it FABULOUS!

So I made one similar. I bought 5 yards of raw silk from a store online (sorry, I don’t remember which store), and hand-dyed the silk with Procion dye in 076 (Cobalt Blue) to make the outer bodice fabric. After a bit of trial-and-error, I came up with a mottley light blue.

I used a pattern for the dress lining and the skirt outer (made from undyed raw silk). I hand-ruched the bodice fabric and attached it to the bodice lining. Then I mixed up a batch of the same dye in my bathtub, wet the skirt, and dipped the bottom hem in it, praying all the while. The dye slowly crept up the skirt and then I brought the dress into the living room, suspending it over a bucket and attaching threads around the skirt perimeter to anchor it outwards so the skirt wouldn’t shut on itself and ruin the ombre effect. (Of course, our cat Muffin got all tangled in the threads at one point and I almost had a heart attack since the dress was still wet.) But it finally dried, and the ombre effect was quite a bit lighter than I had really wanted – but good enough.

I also made my veil out of a doubled-over piece of white tulle I sewed to a silver flower hair-comb from Claire’s.

The whole process took me about 2 months working on it a little bit at a time as I was planning the entire wedding by myself and working full-time…and as my stomach grew, I had to alter the dress twice – adding larger fabric panels and opening the waist darts. I had to work right up until the day before the wedding (at first the hotel where I worked wasn’t even going to give me time off for my wedding day!) and I was hand-sewing the bodice to the dress while answering the switchboard [I was working as a PBX Operator/Linguist]. My supervisor called me in and said I was not allowed to “do arts and crafts” at work, which really made it difficult to get it finished in the critical last 2 weeks. (All the other women working read magazines, newspapers, drew, journaled, or worked on homework [if they were going to school.]) I was even tacking the skirt lining to the outer on the day of my wedding as I was getting my hair done in the salon.

The whole dress and veil cost about $150 – the shoes were Payless!!

My mother-in-law made my bouquet and provided flowers for my hair that matched the blue of my dress.

Had I known then what I do now about construction (and the see-thru nature of silk!!!!), I would have probably done something more like that Galliano dress with the full skirt supported with layers of tulle underneath – but considering everything, I was pretty happy with my version.:-)

Thanks for your question – it was a real trip down memory lane!
xoxox
Carly