My Wedding Dress/My Mom is INCREDIBLE!!!!

It's been just over 6 months since I got married.  And I realized, much to my dismay, that I never blogged about my dress.  For all you men out there who read my blog and who could care less, this is not the post for you!  BUT, for all you girls out there who DO care, read on!

First, my mom made my dress.  Did you hear that??  My Mom MADE my DRESS!!!!!  She is super talented and super gutsy and she did the impossible!  Why was it so impossible?  Well, I'll tell you why:

Barry once told me that I was a cross between an elfin maiden and a nordic warrior princess.  So when we got engaged, I started looking for a dress that fit that picture in my mind.  Here are several that inspired me: (sorry in advance, I don't have all the links for sources.  If you have the source, let me know and I'll give credit.)

This Saja dress that, at the time, was no longer being sold.  They have since revived it and it is now in their 2011 collection.  To me, this looked like an elfin maiden dress.  But I wanted mine long.

 

This nordic warrior looking dress.  I liked the sharp edges of the neck line and sleeves.

I also liked the whimsicalness of this dress:

 And the elegance of this one... (originally found on Once Wed)

So you see - - my mom had a tall order!  Besides that, I'm a P (perceptive, briggs-meyer) and I couldn't make up my mind.  Even up to the final seams we were adjusting and re-evaluating.

Bottom line?  My mom is a trooper!  She is seriously incredible.  We ended up taking elements that we especially liked from the dresses that I liked and making our own dress out of each element.  We took the sleeves and fabric choice from the first dress.  (Saja makes all their wedding dresses out of silk chiffon).  We took our neck line (sort-of; it ended up being less stark) from the 2nd.  And the 3rd and 4th were just inspiration.  We didnt' really take any one element from them.

We found several different patterns that had the required elements and then my mom began the painstaking process of trial and error.  She bought some cheap white fabric and began making practice dresses for me to try on.  Note: she wasn't just using ONE pattern!  She was using MULTIPLE patterns and PIECING them together!!  She is just incredible!  And all this time, I was away at school!  She would send me a practice dress and then I would try it on and tell her over the phone how it fit.  Too big here, not quite right there.  And then my mom would change the pattern and try again!  All in all, I think she made about 3 practice dresses before actually cutting into the real (and expensive!) fabric.  Speaking of expensive though, we saved a TON of money by making our own.  A dress with as quality of fabric and custom work as mine would be VERY pricey!

For those who are wondering, there were three layers.  A China silk lining layer, the off-white main silk layer, and a covering see-through silk chiffon layer with tiny crinkles.  It was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l and oh so soft!

Last week I took my dress out into the early morning California sunlight and did a photo shoot of it.  So here it is, minus me in it!  For those, you can look back at our wedding pictures.

Details:

 

Thank you, Mom!