Finally got the wedding dress fabric!

So, I finally worked out my skirt issues (more on that tomorrow) and could finally buy my underlining fabric! Yay! So, I fought afternoon traffic to go to Fishman's and bought 4 yards of white china silk lining to line the dress. 

 I bought 4 yards of silk charmeuse as my underlining fabric, but turned inside out so the shine does not detract from the lace.!

 My lace is from Mood and I bought it several months ago. I never found any other fabric I liked to the same degree and I am really happy with it; I think it is really pretty!

Close-up with scalloped edges.

From a distance

 I layered them over each other to get the final combination!

Yay! I am a giant procrastinator, but I will finish my dress in the next 2 weeks no problem! Figuring out the pattern was the problem!

Woot, woot!

Bridesmaid's Dress: 62% Complete

I realized I never posted the fabric I ended up choosing. It was the silk dupioni in the Spring Green color. That was the darkest of the choices, but its still quite pale. This is the photo that best shows the color and texture of the fabric:

I lined it with Bemberg rayon in "nude, " which should blend in with their skin if it shows at all. There were no green linings that were even close to the main fabric, so I went neutral. 

 It is 62% complete. I need to hem it by hand, but I have to go to work in a little bit. It will require 1 episode of Downton Abbey, I expect. Maybe longer. I am going to sew down the straps in the front and put in the zipper in New Orleans before the wedding. That will be my chance to have Stephanie try it on and then do a little adjusting, as needed.

So far so good, and I'm finally making progress despite working 6 days a week!

Help me choose bridesmaid fabric!!

As the time crunch to the wedding begins, I need to buy the fabric for the two bridesmaid dresses. If you recall, I am making one for Stephanie and my mom is going to make Vicky's, as they live in the same town. I have made a muslin and fitted it on Stephanie (oh of the Cambie dress pattern). I had just been putting off finding and buying fabric. Finally making time to go to Fishman's (which took no time at all due to little traffic) I was ablle to go and gawk and rub all of the fancy and delightful fabrics there. They are a little pricey, but some of the fabrics were outstanding. 

The colors are really my problem; it is a spring wedding and I chose light green and lavender as my colors. I think my level of coordination piddles out after invites and flowers, but you get the idea. I was just having a terrible time finding nice fabric in light green anywhere. I scoffed at my mom's suggestion of looking at silk dupioni two weeks ago (sorry, Mom! ) but then Fishman's had the best selection of colors that I wanted in dupioni. I think it might actually be nice. It has a little form, some texture and just a little sheen without being shiny and awful. 

I got an employee, who couldn't give two shits about me and was very cranky, to cut me some swatches. Apparently you can get 8 for free. Here are the four I chose for finalists. They are all silk dupioni in various pastels. 

 Left to right: light celery, lavender, spring green, seafoam green (on the table)

 Left to right: seafoam, spring green, lavender, celery (on white muslin for color contrast)

Left to right: celery, lavender, spring green and seafoam. (close-up)

I need to buy the fabric soon and finish the dress by the end of January, plus mail the fabric to my mom for Vicky's dress.

Help me decide, please!!!!

Wedding Planning and Halloween in NOLA

We went to New Orleans last week to do some in-person wedding planning stuff. We checked out our venue and the guy explained how everything will be set up. This is where we will be getting married!

 The reception is in the same place, which I prefer. Everyone is already travelling to attend our wedding, this just makes it easier for everyone!

We also chose and ordered the cake, which will look like this:

Source

Minus the roses, my flowers are different, but the cake topper will be flowers. Also, not fondant so the edges will be crisper and it will actually taste good! The inside is white cake and then layers of filling in almond cream and sliced strawberries and cream.

Source

We also figured out the flowers as well. I really want peonies, but she said we have to wait and see. Sometimes they can get them from Israel in March, but not always. It's going to be lilac, white hydrangea, white peonies (or roses if not) and stephanotis. It should be really pretty! Sort of like these:

Source

So we made a lot of progress. We still have to choose a photographer (which is horrifyingly difficult) and a dj and the order and send out invites. Bam, done!

We were also there for Halloween, so I went as the Miller High Life girl in the moon, which is the best costume I have ever made. A random person emailed me once to see if they could rent it, but I love it too much. Andrew went as Mitt Romney and had his binder full of women and made some pink slips to fire people. It was very amusing.

Pink slips

High life girl in the moon and Mitt Romney

We had a lot of fun and got to see our good friends, so it was a fun and productive trip!

Bridesmaid's Dresses- Phase One

Wow, wedding stuff is so time consuming! I have never really been interested in this sort of thing, so it's a lot of learning. So we have found our venue (and the new vocabulary, lol) and booked, chosen the date, ordered save the date magnets (an idea I blatantly stole from a friend who is getting married in November) and now address labels that match. I'm exhausted...but that might be from substitute teaching every weekday since the strike is over and then working Fri- Sun at the restaurant. Enough whining, on to excitement.

I did manage to email the bridesmaids this week to begin doing dress stuff. We are going down to NOLA around Halloween for fun and to do photographer/flowers/cake/menu/hotel stuff. Driving, since we were too irresponsible to remember to buy plane tickets before they became a tra-billion dollars, whoops. I want to make a muslin so that Stephanie can try it on in person before I make the final version. 

My mom and Vicky live in my hometown, so my mom agreed to make Vicky's. She is being adorably nervous about it, even though she is a much more careful, precise seamstress than I am! lol Anna was going to be my third bridesmaid, but she is having a baby at the end of Feb and the wedding is mid-March. Shockingly, she doesn't want to travel across the country with a newborn baby! :) 

So, I think the bridesmaids will be in the Cambie dress, which will be adorable! I have an uncut copy, so I can trace them off to make both dresses. Won't that be cute?!

 Vicky wants the A-line and Steph hasn't gotten back to me, so I don't know which version yet. Which one do you prefer?

I am going to go to Vogue Fabrics or Fishman's and buy some nice fabric. View A would only need 3.5 yards of 60 inch fabric. That would still make them waayyy cheaper

And on a parting note, here is our save the date magnet! Isn't it cute?I scraped together about 25 pictures of the both of us for the eight years we have been dating where no one is making a derp face. Then we narrowed them down and ta-da!

In Paris where we met, college graduation,
at a parade in NOLA and at the Grand Canyon 

 Anyways, any tips for wedding planning from those of you who have done this before?

Wedding Dress Ideas

I am definitely going to sew my own wedding dress and so far I have found two dresses I like. I haven't looked at patterns because I feel confident that I can copy a dress myself and draft my own pattern. It sounds hard, but it really isn't.

This dress is beautiful and I have had the picture saved on my computer for several years. It is from a University of Virginia website where the costume design students write a page about a vintage clothing item. The website is really helpful because she is analyzing the construction of the dress, which gives me a really clear idea of how I could copy it. This dress is a silk chiffon dress from the 1940s with a basket-weave bodice and a beautiful drapey skirt.

Image from here.

While the dress is yellowed, it originally was dyed in very light pastels, which you can see if you look closely.  It explains that the bodice is fully lined and boned and the back dips 4 inches lower than the center front.. I really think the basket-weave effect is beautiful and wouldn't be very difficult to re-create. 

The skirt is fully lined with a band of crinoline at the bottom. The skirt is made of 12 bias-cut triangles of silk chiffon. The real drawback for this one is that chiffon is a pain to hem and I quote "The skirt itself is cut from twelve, bias cut triangles of the various colored chiffons, each gathered at the top and measuring roughly 120" at the bottom. Thus, the bottom width of the chiffon overskirt is over 1440", or 120 feet, or 40 yards--nearly half a football field in length." 

Haha, my mom just started laughing hysterically when I told her that. I agree, I don't know how I would hem 120 feet of chiffon without going insane and hulk-smashing everything in sight... but the dress is so BEAUTIFUL and looks so wedding-dress-y. It would be a flattering style!

DRESS 2:

I found this dress reading Rebecca's blog. She wrote a post about how McCalls should start offering reprints of some of its vintage patterns and this was one of her examples. It's a 1949 McCall dress featured as the bridesmaid dress to 7500. 

Image from here.

 Now you need to picture it in white, but it is so elegant and beautiful! I like the neckline, the basque points at the waist and the bias skirt. Nowhere on the internet can I find it for sale or even just a picture of the back of the envelope. A line drawing or a diagram of the shape of the pieces would be so helpful. As far as I can tell, it is really just four pieces. Bodice front, bodice back and upper and lower skirt pieces. I think the sleeves are part of the bodice and gathered. I think the upper skirt wraps from the front to the back with no side seams.

Look, I made a poll! Enjoy and leave me comments on what you think!!!

Which dress is best?
1940s basket-weave chiffon McCall 7505 Other, link in comments
	Results

Exciting News!

Andrew proposed last Wednesday and I said yes! He complete fooled me into thinking this was a dressy work-related dinner, but when we got there no one else was there... He planned it all very carefully, apparently weeks ahead of time and it worked- I had no idea!

So cute!

I am so, so, so excited we are thinking about next spring in New Orleans! He bought me a little ring, but we are going to choose one together this week. A wise man knows when he has a super picky girlfriend...

Most importantly, I am obviously going to sew my own wedding dress. It will be amazing!