The Requirements

I'm a simple down-to-earth gal, and by no means fancy.  Though I've had visions of what I'd want my wedding dress to be, I've never felt strongly about any particular style.  Here are the requirements and thoughts that are going into the dress:

1. It should be pretty.
2. The length must work with my 5'2" height, and the fact that I will NOT be wearing heels, and more likely be barefoot the whole time.
3. It will be in August/September, a pretty informal affair, outdoors hopefully.  It will likely be hot, and nobody wants to see a bride with sweat stains.
4. And I'll be dancing, excessively.  Maybe even doing cartwheels.  I want it to bounce and flow.
5. I'm a pretty traditional curvy hourglass.  I'm ok with accentuating (think v-neck).  I'm not OK with revealing (think halter top).
6. Very limited or no decoration, beads, trim, lace, whatever.  I'd love the dress to be simple and have a nice shape and drape.  The fabric should accent itself.
7. I'm not really into white, but I think cream or champagne, something along those lines would be flattering.  Maybe a color accent, maybe not.

Those are the main requirements, otherwise, just about anything goes.  Which means Courtney has lots of freedom and can show off her creative wit!

Measurements, Dress Forms and Patterns

There are few beginning steps we’ll be doing before we start dreaming about fabric and the final dress. We’ll start with measurements, dress forms and patterns:

Measurements:
Taking all of Bex' measurements is key to the fit of the dress. Label-Free has a great illustration they shared last year that talks about some of the things to measure.

Dress Forms:
A great video was featured on the BurdaStyle website about how dress forms are made. The Science Channel produced the video, which you can view here.
This is great, but custom dress forms are expensive! So Bex and I are planning to put together a Duct Tape Dress form. Spoonflower recently posted a great YouTube video that shows the process of putting one together.
I haven’t gone in depth on this post and podcast yet, but it’s on my list to read: http://sewforthnow.blogspot.com/2008/05/episode-28-dress-forms.html
Here’s a great example of a finished duct tape dress form.
There are more great resources out there- here’s the results of a Google Blog search that I’ve barely scratched the surface of!

Patterns:
One of the ideas Bex has is to copy a dress she already has, one with a sweet history (that I will let her share if she wants to). So that means copying something that is Ready To Wear (RTW). We know we don't want to take the dress apart, so when I read this great post on The Princess Seam about copying RTW knew it was a definite possibility. If we want to keep looking (which we will do either way- who doesn’t like to window shop?!), sites like Craftster, Burda Style, Pattern Review and big box stores like Jo-Ann’s will help us to narrow down our ideas about the final dress, too.

I know that Bex has some great tear sheets and ideas she's been gathering. Can't wait to see what she's been dreaming of!

I like to sew...

But never thought I'd get to this point!
My dear friend Bex is getting married in 2010 and a few months ago, she approached me about making her wedding dress.
And I was brave enough to say yes!

So, we decided to start a blog where we can track the process.

Here goes!