Emily’s heirloom wedding dress reconstruction was really special. Let me start from the beginning. I’ve known Emily for a while. We met through another friend when Emily was working at Roswell Cancer Institute at the time. We worked on a little fashion show fundraiser together and she was lovely. From then on, we stayed connected. When she got engaged, she was so excited to come to me! She had two wedding dresses with her: her mother’s and her grandmother’s.
The Plan
The best part about this is the surprise she and her father planned for her mom. Emily knew she wanted to reconstruct these two vintage pieces, but wanted it to be a surprise for her mother. The two are very close, and this was something her mom always hoped Emily would do. When she made the appointment to tell her, Emily’s mom just thought it was another regular fitting. Little did she know, that her father sneakily took the dress from the house and put it in a different container from the box that it was originally in, all so she wouldn’t notice. Apparently, Emily‘s mom a neat freak and notices even the smallest details!
We had a small window to work with because they really wanted to make sure she didn’t notice her dress was missing from the basement. To pull it off, Emily met with me earlier in the day to drop off the wedding dresses with her dad. That way, when the two arrived everything was already swt up, and that’s what happened.
I told Emily I already pulled a couple of pieces I thought she’d really like so when she came out wearing her mother’s dress, the look on her mom’s face was priceless. I can’t help I get a little teary-eyed when I remember it. It’s moments like this that make this whole experience of reconstructing wedding dresses so freaking special. We toasted with some champagne, shed some tears, and started to imagine what we could do with these two wedding dresses.
How it turned out
We ended up using mostly her grandmother‘s wedding dress and had something else in my mind for her mom’s gown. The bride’s grandmother’s wedding dress was a poly satin with a really unique embroidery on it. The style of the dress overall was really conservative and vintage, with a high neckline, long sleeves, embroidered yolk across the skirts and a huge lethal train, it just wasn’t suitable for Emily’s petite frame, so we changed it.
Emily really let me run wild with ideas. Her heirloom wedding dress reconstruction was so fun to reimagine. The one she ended up settling on was really modern and unique. The overall silhouette was then flair. I took the yoke from the skirts and re-draped it to be a bodice. Instead of having the embroidery across the hips, which would’ve made her look a bit wider, I turned it upside down. It created a really beautiful mirror attached down the center front and center back. The dress was really quite simple and minimal other than that. We let the beautiful embroidery speak for itself.
If you’re interested in having your vision come to light with a custom wedding dress, let’s get started!
