In the Studio: August 2013

In September, we posted about our Moms in the Studio day. Brittany and I invited our moms to the studio to discuss our wedding dresses! Both Brittany and I wanted to wear our moms' wedding dresses, but we both needed to do some major updating before that could happen. As beautiful as the dresses are and were (in 1975 and 1986), we wanted to pull them into 2013! Months of work later, our dresses are done!! Check out the transformation of my dress:

Left to Right: Marilyn's Wedding Dress, My Mom's Wedding Dress, Brittany's Mom's Wedding Dress

Before any work has been done. Look at those sleeves!!

For now, the sash is just a strip of fabric and a strip of trim (held by my mom hiding behind the skirt!)

First: The Sleeves

Goodbye sleeves! They were stitched on like any sleeve would be so they were very simple and unobtrusive to remove.

So happy the sleeves are gone!

Playing around with the sleeve length. I knew I wanted a cap sleeve to give a little more coverage for my Catholic wedding, but the shoulders were a little to broad for me for the sleeves to remain the same.

Next: Tackling the neckline!

Scoop neck?

V-Neck? Decision for now: wait until mom comes to town and have her help you decide ;)

Beading Decision

After months of working on my dress and feeling that it wasn't quite right, I realized that what the dress needed was to be de-beaded. The entire bodice was beaded with pearl beads and sequins which were very fitting for 1986, but not so much for 2013. After struggling with my decision and talking to my mom, I bit the bullet at took all of the beads off. (Side note #1: This picture was taken while my car was getting serviced. Weird looks all around.) (Side note #2: That entire bag of beads is missing, guess the VW guys got a present!)

The back was easy (but time consuming) to de-bead. The front was a different story. Many of the beads had been glued on so I had to take all of the lace off completely. I reused lace from the sleeves to recover the bodice.

No neckline, no sleeves, no lace! At this point, the front piece of lace was the only one I had removed from the sleeves so if you look carefully, you can tell that the bodice is mostly bare.

What a train!

Plain lace on the back

After many hours of cutting threads and plucking beads, I had enough plain lace to cover the entire bodice!! To make sure that the lace would lay flat on my body, I put the dress on a dress form to pull and pin the lace into place.

All of the lace sewn on except for the overlapping pieces going over the bust! To avoid Madonna cone-boobs, I cut a slit in each lace piece going over the bust. This way, I was able to pull each half flat over the curves.

Not all of it came out perfect though... Do you see the oval piece on this side that's a little bubbly? I know it's small and not that noticeable, but the perfectionist in me had to fix it.

Enter Mom :)

While the boys were out bachelor partying, my mom and I sequestered ourselves to the studio to FINISH THE DRESS! Since all of the lace had been sewn on, all that was left was the giant decision of what to do with the neckline and the sleeves. Many hours, a trip to Hobby Lobby, and a tired Meghan later, the dress was DONE.

I repurposed the lace that originally trimmed the sleeves to complete the neckline. They were already cut and created the perfect scoop out of the mesh. The trim on the sleeves is a new addition but the scalloped edge fit perfectly with the sweetheart neckline of the dress.

In a stroke of pure BRILLIANCE, my mom suggested rather than having the sash follow around my waist line, to have it start at my waist in the front but taper into the basque waist in the back. It was the final touch that really tied the sash into the dress.