bridesmaid dress update

Quite a while ago I said my bridesmaids would be getting their dresses made by a seamstress local to Indiana. Well, I actually have an update and I call it: Slopcity!

Before I get into that, I'll just explain the process we've gone through. We contacted a seamstress in the winter and she gave us a slot for March to begin sewing the dresses. My mom helped source fabrics by sending me various swatches of green silk and taffeta. We also consulted patterns that had similar skirt fullness to the designs we chose to figure out the needed yardage. We ended up buying 10 yards of emerald green taffeta, at a price of $5/yard.

A few weeks ago I went to Indiana for my shower, so we stopped in at the seamstress's to see the dresses. Bridesmaid M had already been in for a fitting before, but Bridesmaid T's dress was being made entirely from her provided measurements.

Now I finally understood why dress fittings were so traumatic for many women. My own wedding dress was close to my size, so I never had to deal with a too-big dress that looked shapeless and sad and depressing. The dress I tried on for Bridesmaid T though, who is close to me in size, was all of those things. I could see that it looked like the design we chose, but it was just enormous and baggy, hence, Slopcity. Fortunately she'll be able to come in before the wedding to get it properly fitted.

So I begrudgingly offer a photo of the bridesmaid dresses in a very in-between stage. Bridesmaid M's dress is also too big, as you can see. We departed from the original design a bit to provide wider straps and more boob coverage.

I look so enthused, yes?

bridesmaids revisited

(source) 

I've hinted to the bridesmaids dresses a lot, but I've never properly posted on the subject. Here's the recap.

I'm having two bridesmaids for my wedding. One is my childhood best friend, we'll call her M, and the other is a gal also from my hometown and a roommate in college, T. M lives in Indy. T lives in London.

So I have two bridesmaids who live on different continents and have different fashion sensibilities. T is trendy/bohemian and M is more classic all-American. I thought I could make this easy on them by saying "go find a dress you like in a shade of light-ish pink!" Surely I was being progressive and would be completely loved by all.

Apparently finding a light pinkish dress is not so easy. There are many shades of light pink at various stores and some are less appealing than others. Realizing that I'm already being a cruel bride by choosing light pink as their dress color, I should just put the girls out of their misery and choose an option myself.

Ha! It's impossible. A dress under $200 that is flattering and a little fashionable doesn't exist, I think. Or at least in my colors.

After much whimpering and whining, I changed their dress color to a bright alpine green. Hooray. (If you recall, I resisted green at first until I found a suitable shade). Both of my bridesmaids turned out to be thrilled by this color, which makes me very happy.

Now, the dresses are being made. A seamstress in Indiana will charge about 40 per dress, which is cheap. We just need to buy the fabric and she can work from a photo.

Well, the fabric. Last week I stopped in a really amazing fabric store out in the burbs. It had Juicy Couture fabric, for instance! They had some really beautiful silks in a wide range of colors, including my particular green, but get this: 50/yard. Yikes. So I have to find some tissue taffeta on the cheap.

But what, pray tell, are the designs for the girls?

For the boho chic T (and this is the accurate shade of green):

(source) 

And for M, the classic, this:

 (source)

How did you negotiate a small bridesmaid budget but a big love for fashion?

everyone loves a mood board part 3

After getting a little kick out of the flower board, I kept going with these themes.

I needed something to show my two bridesmaids ideas for their dresses (oh that sounds like a whole other post!), so I set out to make a bridesmaid dress board.

Again, the board was created using Style Me Pretty's generator.



Without going into too much detail, I'm quite taken with the look of different dresses on maids..