Getting Up To Speed

Truth be told I've been working on various forms of the dress since about August. M and I got engaged at the beginning of August and my constant need for a project meant that trying on dresses came early in the planning process. I was pretty convinced before even stepping foot in a bridal store that I would be making my own dress, and all it took was a few crazy (read: psychotic, misery-inducing, more-pushy-than-a-lonely-dude-at-last-call) bridal shop ladies and a lot of lengthy trains to seal the deal.

In a few short weeks I tried on 50+ frocks and never got that iconic swooning feeling. This could be because I'm just not that type of gal, as many friends would attest, no doubt. (As an aside, I've been called "a good cynic" and I'm sure that lovely moniker will be reaffirmed as I get deeper in this project). Or it could be that I felt like I was giving into the big bad bridal business and I wasn't willing to succumb to it that easily. Here are some of those white numbers:

I can't wait to pose just like these fine ladies. Anyway, nothing was quite right so I made lots of trips to the local fabric joint to stock up on yards of muslin or similarly cheap fabric. It's unfortunate that my architectural drafting skills are generally useless when applied to clothing so I ended up buying about 15 different patterns as well. The last part of the set-up was to break out some triangles and french curves in order to match up the may different pattern pieces that I would undoubtedly need. I knew (some) of what I wanted - I just needed to figure out how to get it.

Herrera - a skirt to die for

JCrew - I love the top

Amsale - Huge fan of the top, but not sure I could pull it off...

So now you can hopefully see where I wanted to go with this. I'll post some of the trial dresses next!