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I made my wedding dress! Part One

I got married last year and from the moment I got engaged, I knew that I wanted a unique dress. I wasn't one of those little girls that dreamed of my wedding day, so I had no idea what this dress would look like--I just knew I wanted it to be...different.

My mom and some of my friends were urging me to DIM (Do It Myself) but I really, really didn't want to make my dress. I just wanted to walk into a store and find The One...for under $1000 (actually, preferably much less than that). Well, if you've ever gotten married, you know just how silly that notion was. The more I shopped the more I realized that I needed to put my skillz to good use. Given my budget, my constraints (I knew my mom wanted to see me walk down the aisle in a white dress), and my taste (towards the more couture-looking dresses), I knew that the only way I was going to get a dress that I wanted was to DIY, er...DIM.

I started off by shopping for fabrics down in LA. SF has some great fabric stores but surprisingly few of them have good bridal fabrics (even at Britex!). I found this gorgeous fabric at Michael Levine. It is a silver mesh with hand-sewn matte gold sequins. SWOON! Both me and my husband-to-be agreed that it was IT. At $75/yard, though (more like $50 after sales and discounts), I decided I could only buy about 2 yards of it. I also bought about 12 yards of off-white silk jersey...I was thinking that since I am so comfortable with knits, I would stick with the fabric that I was most comfy with for this big project.

Next I found a beautiful off-white satin when we were visiting Portland. A local fabric store was having a going-out-of-business sale (yes I go to fabric stores when we're on vacation!) and I snatched up about 10 yards (just in case!) for about $7/yard. At this point I still didn't know what my dress was really going to look like so I bought some gorgeous silver trim too just in case.

My 2007 was very busy. I was finishing up my degree at art school, working on my thesis (more on that later!), planning the wedding, and on top of all that, I spent the month of July (two months before the wedding!) in Oaxaca. About a month and a half before the wedding, I had finally figured out what my dress would look like. Funny enough, I got the inspiration for the dress from a skirt pattern in my collection (Butterick B4859):

Here is my sketch of the dress (I later removed the bar across the neckline on the advice of my friend, who thought it was too busy):

And here's an Illustrator mockup of the dress design:

The pure white panels are meant to be just a change in texture, not in color--I would use the satin for these pieces.

I sent my sketch around to a few friends just for a reality check, and they were into it. So I started making it.

Well, here's a little secret: I'm not a pattern maker. So, I here's how I got around that:

1. I made a dress. Then I used a Sharpie to mark on it, tracing the pieces according to my sketch:

2. I cut the dress apart along the Sharpie lines.

3. I used these pieces to trace pattern pieces onto paper, adding seam allowances along the way.

4. I used these pattern pieces to make another "test" dress.

5. When the "test" dress worked, I made the real thing.

This entire process happened over the course of 2 weeks, and I finally finished the dress about 2 weeks before the wedding. So there really wasn't a lot of time to second guess. :)

Once I had the pattern pieces finalized (17 of them!!!), I started making the dress. I got about halfway through the front half when I realized my silk jersey was woefully unfit for this pattern. Seriously, the fabric was just WRONG. I was kind of freaking out! I decided to chill out from the whole process and go on a shopping trip. Since I had already done all the SF fabric stores, I went to Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkeley. Well guess what? They had the most perfect stuff! An off-white matte poly blend that was stiff enough to work well with the pattern and soft enough to make me want to wear it. Plus, even at a very affordable $10/yard it looked expensive. I was sold.

It took me about 3 days to make the dress, 2 days to put in the lining, another 2 days fussing with the zipper (oh the zipper!!!), and 2 more days to refit the dress (I was rapidly losing weight due to all the stress from this project!). All in all it took a solid 2 weeks of work and I spent about $400.

Ultimately, I am soooo glad I took on this challenge. I loved wearing my dress and I love that I have a one-of-a-kind souvenir from the occasion. I am most proud of how it fit--I am not embarrassed to say that it was like a glove. Here are a couple of photos of my in the dress (photos 1 & 3 by Felix Chu and photo #2 by Jennifer Kloss Heffner):

Front View:

Back View:

Straight-up view:

Read on for Part Two: What I Learned from this Experience.

Was your wedding dress DIY? Post a link to a photo of your dress in the comments below!

— Hope

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