For years, my sister lived in dread of my wedding day, in dread that I would make her wear a pink, puffy-sleeved "pregnancy dress." :-) Personally, I do love pink, but I wasn't set on using it for our wedding color. As the date became real, I assured her that we could compromise. The empire waist was a must, but the sleeves could go. As I looked through magazines, I initially settled on a soft--but warm--violet for my other friends and a slightly deeper shade for her.
I must have scrolled through hundreds of thumbnails of bridesmaids' dresses online. Make that thousands. Heidi first tried on a dress at David's that looked promising in a picture but wasn't as flattering in person. Finally, I found a couple of dresses I liked from Eden and we discovered that Jocelynn's in Clifton Park had them on the floor. It helped, too, that Eden had gotten good ratings in Bridal Bargains for quality and that both the dresses we looked at were around the $125 max I was planning on.
Heidi tried them both on and we chose our favorite of the two, but before going ahead and ordering them, we decided to learn from our experiences with my dress and have Dad give us his man's-point-of-view assessment of its modesty. Mom and I met him at the mall one day after work.
Unfortunately, the dress wouldn't pass without some "help." The seamstress in residence offered to order extra fabric to widen the straps and heighten the front and back, but we realized that every little thing she did would add to the cost of the dresses. A little jacket was another option, but I wasn't going to ask my friends to shell out another $70 for a jacket that I didn't even think was very cute.
Plan B. Mom found a McCall's pattern that I loved and we decided to have the dresses made by a seamstress. Though we couldn't find the same light violet that the Eden dresses came in, we opted for a darker eggplant in the same color family from Joann's line of special occasion fabrics. We had to go to the Joann's in Albany to order the yardage we needed for five gowns, but the man who helped us was so kind that he let us use 40% off coupons on both the crepe base and chiffon overdress material! I was also excited that we could trim the empire waists with matching velvet ribbon, just like my dress! Having gowns made also meant that one of my friends, who is skilled at the sewing machine herself, could make her own dress and save some money.
Finding a seamstress for everyone else's gowns was harder than I anticipated. Several people gave me leads, but everyone I called couldn't do it for some reason or other. We were told that fabric shops often recommended seamstresses, so the next time we were at Joann's, we asked about that. They didn't recommend particular people, but they did keep a file of cards left by seamstresses, quilters, etc. Mom took down all the promising phone numbers and I sat down one day to make phone calls. No success. The numbers were disconnected, or the seamstresses only did alterations, etc. One lady was encouraging at first, but tried to convince me that having "custom" dresses made would cost at least $200 a piece for labor alone. I didn't see what was so "custom" about following a pattern, personally . . .
So, Mom tried the Joann's in Glens Falls. Once again I started my series of unanswered/discouraging phone calls. But finally one of the seamstresses called me back. Yes, she sewed dresses. Yes, she was within our price range. And she lived less than ten minutes from Mom and Dad's house!
I was so excited that I wrote off all other possibilities, even though I later regretted it when we ran into some glitches with her. But we were so thankful to find someone, finally, and thankful for her location, too. It was February when we first met with her and I e-mailed all my faraway friends with requests to send in their measurements. Now we just had to wait on four girls with busy, busy schedules.
Communication was key with our seamstress. If we hadn't been vigiliant, I think that we would have had very different-looking dresses from the ones I envisioned! Her early assurances that she didn't need a pattern, just a picture, had convinced us of her skill, but I didn't realize until later that she wasn't planning to follow the pattern! Thankfully, our earnest request for "modest" did come across, and even though her dresses were slightly different from the one my friend was making for herself, if anything they were a little more modest.
I definitely learned through it all that not everything will be perfect. Little mistakes meant that our seamstress had to fix two of the dresses in the day or two before the wedding itself. So much for planning ahead! But at the end of the day, my bridesmaids didn't have to walk down the aisle naked, as I'd jokingly bewailed at my most frustrated times. On the contrary, they looked gorgeous in their flowing empire gowns. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment