Mini-Seamstresses

I am working on sewing the bridesmaids' dresses for our wedding in November. Its not going so well because you have to get certian points exactly spot on or they get weird folds.

But it's okay. The Seamstress Brigade is helping me out.

Regretfully, they're not the best tailors around... they kind of just spew cat hair everywhere and sit on things. Maybe I need to look around for some new helpers.

Possibly the kind that have thumbs.

Cheers,

Red

Dress-up Doll: Part III

Mom and Dad came up on Monday and we went to a bridal store south of here. They didn't carry my dress in the store but they said that it could be ordered from the company. For nearly FOUR HUNDRED dollars LESS than where I found it back home. YAYY!

Since they didn't carry the exact dress, I tried on a couple of other dresses to make sure the style/cut of the skirt would be what I expected. And, as an added bonus, the dresses I tried on were ACTUALLY THE CORRECT SIZE! Crazy talk!! Those suckers look significantly better when you're not being clipped in like some sort of woodworking project.

After going to this store, I figured out why people say that they enjoy looking at formal dresses! When the staff is helpful and there are affordable dresses in the correct size, it's actually pretty awesome.

After all that, I ordered my dress! It should come in June or July. So exciting!!

Cheers!
Red

PS Funny story! Monday morning I called the store and asked if they could tell me the price of the dress since it would have to be ordered. The owner called me back a bit later and told me the price. I was a little surprised since most places aren't willing to give out that information, but hey, awesome for me.

Apparently while I was setting up the order with someone else, Dad overheard a discussion the owner was having. She was rather angry because someone "with a 513 area code called this morning and asked the price of a gown. I didn't want to tell her because she's obviously just shopping around". Interesting... being that I called from a 513 area code in the morning and asked the price of a gown and then I was standing at the counter ordering it. EEeentereesting....

Dress-up Doll: Part II

A few days after the David's Bridal fiasco I went to a bridal boutique. The consultant showed me the racks and racks of dresses and explained the pricing breakdown. Dresses under a thousand dollars on the back wall, then two thousand, three, five, "and you could even go up to like forty thousand". HOLY WEDDING, BATMAN!!! Forty thousand dollars??? Does it come with a car hidden inside it?? So that made me a bit nervous.

We pulled out a bunch of dresses and went into the fitting room. Yes, "room" singular. There was a big room with mirrors all over the place and some chairs. You could either get dressed in the middle of the room or go to the other side and put on the dress in a little curtained stall. Well, if the point is to try on multiple dresses, I'm not going to go stomping back and forth in a dress that I may not even like, so I opted to change in the middle of the room. We were the only ones there originally so it wasn't completely weird, only mostly weird.

I got another smushy girdle bra and started in on the dresses. These were "designer dresses" though, so the store only had ONE of each. This meant that a lot of them were totally trashed... They were dirty and torn and apparently only in one size. Because I'm so small I got to be clipped into my dresses with big metal shop clips, the ones with the orange plastic bits on the ends. Most of the dresses felt and seemed pretty awkward since there seemed to be FEET of dress pinned in the back.

I didn't really have a great time, the dresses looked and felt dirty and I felt really disgusting after trying them on. I was also discouraged since I couldn't tell what the dresses would really feel or look like without enormous metal clips holding them onto my body....

Hilariously, when we were about half done, my polar opposite walked in. A blond, Southern beauty queen, at least twice my size. Where I was looking at close-fitting narrow silhouettes, she was looking at "princess" dresses with huge trains and poofy ball-gown bottoms. The dresses were huge swirls of white with feathers and fabric that must have weighed more than me. She had to be pinned into her dresses as well, but not to make them smaller. Her consultant was connecting clips to each other to try to keep the dress closed.  Seeing both of this happening in the same room made me think they maybe should have gotten more dress sizes and fewer garage clips...

At the end of the day, though I was feeling defeated and dirty, I did find THE dress... I've been trying to find it elsewhere because it costs over a thousand dollars at the boutique O_o

And so the search continues...

Cheers,
Red

Dress-up Doll: Part I

When I was at home a few weeks ago I went to a couple of bridal stores and tried on dresses. It was a very strange experience to say the least. Normally I buy my clothes at places like Target, Macy's, or JC Penny... I just go in there and go "hmm... I need pants." Then I go to the "pants" area and I find some pants and I put them on. Then I look in the mirror in the dressing room (which, btw, I am in alone) and go, "good pants" or "bad pants" and then I buy them (or don't). Although, I suppose I should preface this with: first I look in the "sale" section for said pants because I am a cheap-a**.

However, when you go wedding dress shopping this isn't exactly the process that you go through. When you go into a wedding dress store you have to "sign in/up" because they track the dresses you're interested in (I think?). Then you're assigned a "bridal consultant" who is going to find dresses you might be interested in and (I did not realize this) help you put them on.

Originally I was planning to sew my own dress, but as it turns out, there aren't too many patterns for wedding dresses. I also have a very specific look I want and there aren't any dresses that are even similar enough that I could alter. And... I'm not an excellent seamstress. I'm good, but not great so whatever I make wouldn't be as nice as what I would be seeing in the stores. So, plan number two. I sketched out the type of dress I am looking for and brought it in to the bridal stores.

When I got to the store, I showed my picture to the consultant and they tried to come up with dresses that might match what I was looking for. The look I want is fairly uncommon so there wasn't anything that matched perfectly so I ended up trying on a couple of different styles to figure out what I was really looking for.

I went to David's Bridal first. When the consultant showed me to the dressing room she asked me my bra and pants sizes. Um... what? I assumed this had to do with the size of the dress or something. Nope... This was actually for a bra .. thingy... to use to wear when trying on dresses. It was like a girdle or something, super tight and constricting and I couldn't put it on by myself because there were like a million hooks and eyes up the back. Bridal checklist: Feel like a smushed sausage? Check.

After I was decked out in my excellent smushy girdle-bra, the consultant brought in some dresses. She helped me put them on (which was weird) and I felt like a cupcake. It didn't really help that sizes around 2 and 4 are not really common so the dresses were a tad big. I couldn't believe trying on some of those huge poofy dresses you see in pictures, I felt lost in pertty much everything I tried on. I didn't feel like a beautiful princess, I felt like a kid playing dress-up and it didn't feel all that great.

I didn't find anything that looked like I had imagined and nothing had that "OMG I AM SO BEAUTIFUL" reaction. I'd need to continue with the dress search.

Cheers,
Red