In the Studio: Moms in the Studio

A few Saturdays ago, Meghan's and my moms came up to the studio for an afternoon of tea and wedding talk. I made cucumber sandwiches, Meghan made lemon cookies, and Marilyn created a teascape worthy of the queen. This was the first time either of our moms would be touring the studio and meeting Marilyn, so we were really excited to show off our work... and our dresses!

Both Meghan and I are going to update our mothers' dresses for our own weddings, but we will not be doing any major updates until after our current studio projects are finished. We wanted our moms to see us in their dresses, cleaned and in their full glory before we changed them in any way. We had a blast trying on our mothers' gowns and talking in depth about what we were going to do with them to update the dresses for our own weddings. And of course we took pictures.

***ATTENTION: SPOILER ALERT! If you are the fiance of either Meghan or myself, you should not go any farther in this post. I'm looking at you, Nick and Steve!!***

Now, then.

My parents got married on August 2, 1975, and Meghan's parents wed exactly 11 years later (to the day!) Both gowns are long sleeved, and with ruffles and long, wide trains. However, the differences in style and cut between 1975 and 1986 are immediately clear. Meghan's dress has intricate beading and lace with a chiffon overlay to give it a "dreamy" effect; very Princess Di! The lace on my mom's dress is of the large 70s style flowers seen so often in flashback reels, and the belled sleeves and empire waist popular of the time. Both dresses have a flowy vintage feel that is very different from the structured bodices that are so popular right now. We will be documenting our progress as we merge old and new to create something perfectly suited to our personal styles, without losing the deeply personal effect of wearing our mothers' dresses.

With the dresses on, we talked about our initial ideas for each update, which you can see a bit of on our Pinterest pages for Meghan and me. We will discuss more details as we go, and share our updates here.

And without further ado, The Gowns!