Last weekend we celebrated our first anniversary! I can’t believe how time just flew by and I didn’t take te time to write this article (although I really wanted to!!)
Our “love celebration” as we called it.. a weekend by a lake with our most cherished friends and family! It was just how I imagined it.. even better!
I had decided, just like for our civil ceremony, to make my dress myself (with a LOT of help!). It was a lot of trial and error but in the end I’m so happy I had the dress of my dreams without spending a fortune!
This article isn’t exactly a tutorial as I didn’t do everything myself, it’s more of a guideline of the steps, the important things to know and really to inspire you to try the adventure yourself!
1. Inspiration
I fist spent a LOT of time on pinterest looking at wedding dresses and deciding on options that I loved most and seemed feasible see pinterest board here. Clearly Laure de Sagazan’s dresses were my thing!
2. But where to start?
I was lucky enough to have the chance to go to Mood Fabrics with two friends from my bridal party 5 months before the wedding (yeah, not that long before!). I first chose the fabric for the dress… a beautiful cream coloured crêpe de chine.
Then I could choose the lace to make the little top. It was the hardest, I loved so many different types of lace. I finally chose this cery sheer scalloped lace.
I took 3 meters of the crêpe de chine and 1 m of lace (I think!)
Total cost : about 250 $
Then you have to know your strengths and weaknesses
My limits: Patience for the details and technical knowledge
My strengths : Creative, determined and motivated!
3. My DIY wedding dress
the botton
I asked my best friend’s mom to help me since she had the exact strenghts of my weaknesses. She helped me A LOT (pretty much did the whole skirt part)
Outline of the steps
- Play around with your fabric on yourself, try different pleats before you decided. I chose 2 pleats in front and 2 in the back.
- Do the math (ew): measure your waist line and divide the number you get my the number of pleats/their width to make it work. The idea is to have as much fabric as possible since you are using rectangles so the wider they are at the top (and bottom) the more flowy your skirt will be.
- Place your pleats when you’ve measured them. check and check again before cutting/sowing.
- For the fastening we used an invisible zipper on one side and put a pocket on the other (pretty useful for kleenex during the ceremony!)
- For the bottom we made a 3 inch invisible hem (apparently that’s what the haute couture hem is..)
- For the belt we created one using what was left over from the side on the skirt. We created pleats and added if to the top of the skirt. It closes up over the zipper with traditional clasps.
The top
That’s the part I did and I’m pretty proud!
For the camisole part I traced a dress a already had to create the pattern
Outline of the steps:
- Find a pattern you like and trace it on paper. Ideally make a protoype in another fabric to make sure it works
- The idea os taht the bottom is wide enough to cover a bit of your lower back (like the dress I traced from)
- I then traced and cut 2 pieces
- Placed them right sides togethe and overcast
- Add straps (pretty long… you’ll adjust later
- sew at 1 cm and cut your notched. Flip outside in
- Iron flat and sew all around to make sure it stays in place
- I then added darts (fun fact I forgot to sew them they were only overcast..oops we had to sew them by hand last minute as I was getting dressed!)
I assembled it with the skirt. I was sewn all along up to the zipper and the the little bit that was left had to be sewn on me the day of (I kind of liked the idea of being sewn into my dress). The straps were sewn to the inside of the skirt belt
The lace top
For the top I simply follow this pattern. For the back I folded the lace on itself and insertes bands of fabrics I made with left overs from the dress (about 2 cm wide)
I only put 3 buttons at the top and used the same ribbon as the straps to create loops. Neckline is simple cream bias tape.
Here are a few pictures of the ceremony
All pictures were edited with this lightroom preset (affiliate link)
