wishful wednesday : wedding gowns

I wish I could wear MY DRESS again on my wedding day.



Seriously. It is the Casablanca 1881 and I still love it.



It is made of silky taffeta and has a pleated champagne bodice with just the right amount of beading along the bottom of a sweetheart neckline. The skirt pleats and gathers at the sides and back to make a full chapel train with buttons top to bottom.



It's way more beautiful in person, and with the way the skirt falls, it almost looks even more stunning bustled!



I loved the back of the bodice! Even though it wasn't as dramatic of a drop on me because I had to have it altered so much. (More on that below...)



Funny story about that dress though... Due to James' job and a few other details I only had TWO months to plan our wedding. So as you can imagine when I walked in to the dress shop and told them how soon I'd be needing a gown they informed me that even if I found a dress that day, it'd take at least 4 months to order it from the designer, so I just might as well head on over to David's Bridal...

Well thankfully there was a seamtress at this particular shop (All About Weddings in Germantown, TN) and she swore to me that if I was able to find a "sample" dress in the shop that I liked, not only would I be able to get it for deal (Like 60% off! Your welcome, Mom and Dad...), but she would be able to alter it until it was the perfect fit.

Well I fell in love with the first dress I tried on - the Casablanca 1881 - at which the seamtress cringed because of course it was MOST difficult to alter because of all the pleating and the fact that there's no side seams. But I took a risk, bought the dress, and somehow she did it. She cut that thing down from a sample size 10 to a 0, and at the end of the day no one could tell otherwise. She's my hero. Ha!

And because it was so big she was able to leave some extra room in the back so that someday it could be let out for someone else (a daughter if she wanted to) to wear it. She just better be a shortie like her mama!

I'm still amazed at how all the little details were able to fall together for me to ACTUALLY pull off a wedding in 2 months. Crazy... And the only catastrophe was my mom locking my dress in her car 1 hour before the ceremony (that's when I connected with my inner Bridezilla) and my flowers being ruined by the intern girl who took my order behind her manager's back (I had no idea) because she thought she was just that good. And oh my, she was NOT. I would tell everybody and their mother not to use Holiday Flowers in Memphis if the owner had not been so VERY apologetic/embarassed about the whole situation. We got reimbursed in full, and I'm pretty sure intern girl was kindly told that flowers were not her calling... But it still can't change the fact that I have to look at pictures of bouquets that are not only the wrong color/flowers and half wilted, but look like I let a 10 year old put them together. I didn't even save a single rose petal because I knew it'd just make me cry!