How I Made My Wedding Dress

I started it when I was an old-maid and without any suitor

I sketched my wedding dress when I was maybe nine or ten.

I loved it so much that my when my mother was making wedding clothes for my sisters and me for an aunt’s wedding, I asked her to make me the dress then. She did.

My favorite parts were all the pink accents — the pink insert at the neckline, the three rows of puffy pink satin on the sleeves, and the two pink scalloped hem edges. The entire dress was satin, and would have a veil and train.

I thought it was the perfect design and never redrew it.

As the years went on I began to question whether or not I’d ever have the opportunity to make my own wedding dress. Nearly all my friends were married and with babies, and at twenty-six years old I finally accepted that I was an old-maid by all rights.

However old-maids still sometimes find true love. After all, at this point in life I was working as a seamstress and specializing in wedding dresses . . . I couldn’t help feeling a little hopeful and romantic about my future.

These are all dresses I either altered, sewed entirely, or helped make

And so it was, late one night, as I was scrolling Facebook market place, I saw over twenty yards of dead-stock silk for sale. I had no man. “If I do meet someone,” I told myself. “I won’t want a long engagement, so perhaps I should start making the wedding dress I want now so that when I meet him we can marry quicker . . .”

Besides, I was nearly done sewing my hope-chest quilt, a project of five years that I’d started after the termination of my first relationship. Part of me felt that “Mr Right” might come along once this quilt was completed.

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I purchased the dead-stock silk for around $200, wrapped it up carefully, and went back to work completing the final details on my quilt. As soon as I finished the quilt I talked to an older woman about my plans to start my wedding dress before meeting my husband. If I never met anyone I could always sell it. She approved, and helped me find a good source of lace-weight silk yarn, which I ordered for about $80.

I did not actually need to start sewing the dress, though, before my husband came into the picture. The same month I purchased the yarn, Andy called me for the first time. We had a lovely phone conversation that left with me with me feeling like he was the one I’d marry.

Even though he “broke” up with me only two weeks later, I still felt confident about him. I remember telling my friends, “I’ve never felt so respected as someone told me we couldn’t work out.” My yarn arrived in the mail and I began work knitting a lace bodice at once.

Three months later he reached out to me once more — by this time I had much of the bodice knitted. He came out to court me for two weeks then left me with my first kiss and a promise that he’d marry me. I hosted two seasons of the Living Room Academy that summer, finished knitting my dress bodice, and began working on designs for the skirt and train.

When he returned in early September, we were engaged. He spent a day with my brothers so my mom could help me measure myself and cut out the skirt and train. First we drafted a pattern on some old sheets.

Cutting out the wedding dress skirts

blocking the bodice

I packaged up all my wedding dress pieces — the finished bodice parts and skirt panels — and shipped them to my husband’s grandmother’s home where I planned to finish sewing the rest of my dress.

However, I also wanted to make lace trim for the dress — enough to edge the skirt flounces and veil. This was the only part I couldn’t keep invisible to Andy. And so as we fell in love and took a train from my home in Montana to his family in Upstate New York, my hands were always full of growing silk lace and a sterling silver shuttle.

I did a lot of this dress backwards.

I didn’t actually draw what I wanted it to look like until AFTER I was ready to begin assembling the dress. I made this dress, as I made my quilt, wanting to incorporate a variety of skills: knitting, sewing, beading, embroidery, and tatting.

Once I had the lace and bodice done, and I was in Upstate New York, I sketched a basic design for the dress, determined what I’d use for a closure in the back, and began making a pattern.

This was the easiest part — and the most magical, as I began to see the dress come to life. I put pockets on the middle skirt flounce and made removable sleeves from silk velvet just so I’d have them as an option (I never wore them). I made a pattern for the bodice out of a sheet by tracing the lace bodice I’d knitted, and then lined the bodice with silk. I ran out of silk because I used so much with the skirt, however I still had the Facebook information for the woman who sold me the original batch the previous year, and she happened to have a few more yards she’d found.

I decided to use vintage pearl buttons I found on Etsy for about $40. I did thread loops for the buttons with the silk yarn. I French seamed the entire dress, hand sewed the hems, and made bias tape for the underarms and waistline. The bodice is fully lined.

That winter I taught another session of the Living Room Academy and let some of the girls make a couple of the button loops for my wedding dress.

I had a lot of interruptions while making the dress — Andy would like to take sporadic trips for days on end. By this point we were already secretly married with plans to have our big wedding in the spring, but I was still keeping the dress a secret from him, hiding it away in a room he wasn’t permitted to enter.

One day I came back to find half of my pearl buttons scattered — the mice had believed them to be bits of cheese, I guess!

I wasn’t entirely certain how I’d do my veil, or if I’d even make it myself. I considered thrifting a vintage veil, but I knew most of those would be polyester. I found a place to order silk sheer online from Britain for about $7 a yard — I ordered about three yards. I had some silk floss on hand from an embroidery project I’d done years before. I ordered seed pearl beads from Etsy — another $80 or so. I had to special order hair-thin needing needles from England for about $10.

I lined the entire veil with silk lace I tatted.

I free hand drew my embroidery design on many pieces of fax paper I taped together, then transferred it to the silk sheer with an iron-off pen. I did the design in such a way so that if I decide to later cut the veil to make it into a mantilla, I can do so without cutting into any of the embroidery. It took me about a month to embroider and bead the veil.

I didn’t keep track of exactly how much I spent on making the dress, but I estimate it was around $500 and about a year of on and off work (I think I could make the dress again in about three months, veil included).

I wore a muslin hoop skirt underneath — I thrifted the body of the slip, but sewed on extra layers of muslin to add vitality to the wedding gown. I originally wanted to make a slip from cotton bobbinet, but couldn’t find it cheaper than $30 a yard. I needed so much for the skirt that I would’ve spent more on the slip than the dress, had I gone that route.

I didn’t know if I wanted to wear a bra with my wedding dress, but I made the dress so I could insert pads last minute if I wished to do so, which I did.

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Final Results

Picture captured with my dumb phone, but I love it anyways

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