Emma’s DIY Wedding Dress

I'm so excited to share the story of my wedding dress with you. Other than getting to marry my best friend, my dress is probably one of the most special memories from my wedding season. First off you should know that my dress is homemade. I forget when I actually told Elsie that I wanted her to design my wedding dress. But I do remember her mouth dropped a little. And I can understand why—what a lot of pressure. "Hey sister, would you mind making the most speical dress I'll ever wear that I will be in on the most photographed day of my life?"

But I couldn't resist. I love my sister's designs (you can see some of her past dress designs here and here). There's a reason I have always been completely confident in her as a creative business partner. She's very talented. And there's no one else I'd rather have design my wedding dress.Elsie designed and worked on the dress. What made the project EXTRA special is how so many of my other friends and co workers worked on my dress as well. Lots of work was done by: Katie, Kinsey, and Jessica. I even cut out some of circles that became the ruffles. My dress was inspired by this one that Elsie designed for our friend Stacy King to wear for a Sucre shoot. This dress was created from several vintage dresses, pieced together to create the bottom half. The top of my dress is the same design, with a different bottom half. I just loved how the ribbon criss-crossed and became the back of the dress. I could also tell that this style of dress would work well with my body type. My dress was constructed from all new fabrics, and we used gold ribbon instead of black to match my wedding colors better.My favorite detail on the dress is all the little ruffles on the bottom. So. Many. Ruffles. These probably drove everyone a little crazy to make because there are so many. The ruffles are each a small circle of fabric (three different sizes, large on the bottom and smaller circles up top) that get folded into a triangle, machine stitched into a triangle and then hand-stitched down in vertical rows along the layers of the dress.

It might surprise you but this dress was still very light weight and easy to wear. I even felt pretty comfortable riding a bike in it. A little tip- I did use double sided dress tape on the inside edges of the front, just so I would feel more comfortable moving around, picking up my neice or hugging friends on the day of the wedding! And I wore a vintage dress that Mallory altered for me during my reception. Because I love dancing and the length of my wedding dress probably would have been problematic. Plus, who doesn't love a costume change? 🙂I took my dress to have it cleaned, but now it's just hanging in my closet. Kind of sad for such a special and lovingly crafted dress. I would like to display it somehow, maybe on a dress form in our guest bedroom or in a giant shadow box. My house is quite small so whatever room it's in it will become the focal point, but maybe it should anyway. Whatever we decide I will be preserving it for years to come. 🙂 Thanks for letting me share! xo. Emma

Wedding photos by: Arrow & Apple