The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

I have made many, many hundreds of wedding gowns, bridesmaids dresses, and mother of the bride and groom's gowns over the past 23 years of business, but for the next few months I am declining paying work in order to undertake a very special project: I will be making all the apparel for my own daughter's wedding.

That includes my mother of the bride's dress, my daughter's wedding gown and veil, four bridesmaids dresses, and five tuxedos for the groom and groomsmen. I will be writing about the experience here periodically over the next few months, and I will be documenting both the technical process and the human process. I will show process photos and cropped photos of garments, but images of completed garments on the wearers I will share after the wedding! 

Sewing is more to me than just cutting and stitching fabric pieces together. When someone sews well for herself, the process of designing a garment, measuring her body, drafting a pattern or adjusting and modifying a commercial pattern, cutting the fabrics, sewing the pieces together, pressing, and fitting produces clothing that embraces her body, enhances her appearance and therefore self esteem, and raises her apparent social status. That's a lot for clothing to achieve, but socially, that's how it functions. Sewing for yourself is the ultimate act of self acceptance and self affirmation: this is who I am; this is what I am; I love myself and will live my full life exactly as I am.

I perform this same dressmaking process for others for a fee; however, it's not just a financial transaction, at least for me. Unlike slapping down your plastic in a store, dressmaking is an intimate exchange between one human being and another. I don't just sew for you. I give you my talents, expertise, and cosmic energy, and that gift helps you feel good about yourself and helps you live your life to the fullest.

When a mother sews for her daughter's wedding, this equation explodes: Expertise X Energy Expended = Emotional Involvement to some Exponential Degree. In other words, the clothes I will make in the next few months may not be the fanciest or the best that I have ever or will ever sew, but they are the most important. They're for my baby girl.

The Mother of the Bride's Dress

I am making all of the clothing in order of least replace-ability, in case I get hit by a truck before the wedding. I am making the garments that I could not buy first and the ones that could be easily replaced by RTW last, so, the order of production will be: my dress, Claire's dress, the BM's, and then the tuxes. I am hoping to complete Claire's dress in November, the BM's in December, and the five tuxes in January and February. My last paying dress went out the door in late October, so I made my dress the last week of the month, around Halloween, which is somehow appropriate.

Any readers who have met me probably know that I am socially gauche and a bit phobic, and that is putting it kindly. The idea of being one of the principal players in a social event with 150 guests including lots of strangers and odds and ends of relatives scares the be-jeebers out of me. I am also a very large person, so I naturally attract attention whether I want it or not, and people look me up and down; that is human nature. So, my attitude in terms of design is, let's give them something to look at!

Nearly a year ago, I scored two ten yard pieces of silk shantung for only $5 a yard, which is a tremendous bargain, thinking that they might work for BM dresses. Since then my daughter decided that she wanted light blue for her maids, and these pieces were navy and a greyish blue color. So, with Claire's blessing, I decided to use them for my outfit.

A while back I used a Victorian design pattern for a bridal skirt for a plus sized bride that looked really, really good on her. I also made a couple of jackets for myself out of a historical pattern for a Victorian Cuirass, modified a bit, that I also liked. No, I would not even think of wearing a Victorian corset with anything, although I do make them.

My original plan was to use both colors of the shantung, in hopes of blending in with all the blues and silvers that Claire is using in her wedding. So, I made the skirt up in the navy shantung and lined it with some blue cotton sateen that I had purchased for the BM dresses and decided not to use. Then I made the jacket up in the greyish blue, underlining in silk organza for some non-clingy firmness and shape, leaving the neckline open so I could pin the ubiquitous corsage on the revers, with a row of closely spaced Swarovski buttons marching up the center front closure and extra fullness in the sleeve cap for a bit of extension across the shoulders. I planned to pull the disparate colors together with a double ruffle made with both colors plus some silver trim down the center, using this combo around the six plus yards of the skirt hem and probably up the center fronts of the jacket on either side of the buttons and around the mandarin collar.

Of course, I did a sample of the ruffle.

It's a good thing I did, because I hated it! Some fabrics don't ruffle very attractively, and this shantung did not look good if ruffled no matter what grain line I cut the samples from; it was just flat and blah looking. Also, I decided I did not like the navy and bluish grey together, and no 8-9 yards of finished ruffles would pull the colors together as successfully as I had envisioned.  Cutting about 60 yards of ruffle strips,  sewing them together, hemming and gathering them before hand sewing the whole shebang to the garments would take many, many hours of work, and it just didn't look the way I thought it would.

So, back to the design drawing board. Luckily, I liked the untrimmed greyish blue jacket that I had completed at this point and I had LOTS of that fabric left to play with. I could have made a new navy jacket, but the jackets are much more work than the skirts, and I didn't want to do all navy, which would be very dark, for a wedding. So, I decided to cut another skirt in the greyish blue to match the completed jacket.  To save a little time, I surgically extracted the sateen lining from the navy skirt to reuse it. I can still wear the navy skirt, although I am not sure where. My daughter called it "very Carolina Herrera," when she saw it, referring to the designer who nearly always wears a dark, long skirt and white blouse at fashion shows. If you see some large woman running through the Costco in Columbia, MD next summer in a very full, long, navy silk shantung skirt, sandals, and a white cotton blouse, it's me.

I also decided to add a bit of crinoline that I had laying around to the new skirt, sewing it to the lining so the net is inside the layers of the skirt and not against my skin. It rustles, I hope attractively and not annoyingly. I have never worn a dress with a crinoline before, but my theory is that the bigger the dress looks, the smaller I will look in comparison! That's also why I put sleeve heads in the jacket to support the puffed leg-o-mutton sleeves! I was thinking of using the 10 yards of silver trim that I had purchased on the new skirt, but I decided that the beautiful fabric, the shape of the two pieces, and the row of Swarovski buttons down the front were plenty. I am going to be channeling my inner Vicky in this dress, and I hope will look large and in charge.

Sneak Peek!

Next blog: The Wedding Gown!