Like many brides, S had dreams of her perfect wedding gown! And also like many brides, there was a bump in the road on the journey to her dream dress. S’s husband is from China and while there on a family trip, she went shopping in the wedding dress district! While she was there, she found a dress she loved but wanted a slight change to the design. The strap on the back of the dress was asymmetrical and she wanted the keyhole to meet in the center of her back. The dress was ordered with this change, but when the dress was finished the back was just not right. This is where we come into play! S brought us her beautiful lace gown to see if we could straighten things out.
Look how crooked that is!
At her first fitting, we discussed the other standard alterations she’d need. The gown was much too big on her! She especially wanted to see if we could reshape the bust to look and feel more natural. She also needed a hem but wasn’t ready to commit to a bustle style.
You can see how much the dress needed to be taken in.
We had to take the bust in a lot to make it fit her petite frame, but before we did any pinning, we actually removed some of the boning in that area to let the dress drape more closely to her body.
Then we needed to solve the mystery of the wonky back. This involved A LOT of measuring. We needed to take in the sides of the back strap a different amount on either side because it was crooked. Bea actually enjoyed solving this dress puzzle!
Here you can see the panels of the back of the dress, and they do not match up at all.
Bea is measuring the inside panels of the dress to work out how much needed to be evened out.
The back of the dress had button loops that were pulling very badly so we added hooks and eyes behind them to fix it.
Before
After
We also took in the back princess seam and the hips to better shape the fit of the dress.
We fixed the crooked zipper by taking out the bottom to reset it and straighten it out.
Here you can see that the zipper is very crooked.
Bea is working on resetting the zipper to fix it.
While working on the hem, S requested that we remove the horsehair braid from the bottom to make the skirt drape more softly. The edge of one side of the dress was very pointy and Bea worked on that to even it out. To finish off her dress we added spaghetti straps that were donated by a previous bride who didn’t need them.
The straps looked gorgeous with her dress!
Because S was worried that her dress wouldn’t be able to be fixed, she actually ended up buying a backup dress just in case. When she returned for her second fitting, she was beyond pleased we were able to make her first dress work! We altered her second dress so she could have two looks for her big day! Her second dress needed just a little shaping. It also didn’t have a train, so it worked perfectly for the reception.
S’s second dress
In the end, S looked symmetrical and beautiful on her wedding day in two gorgeous looks! Any future bride should know that just because something looks weird before you have real alterations done doesn’t mean it's going to stay looking that way. There are bridal seamstresses out there that can make your dress fit you like a glove!
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