My First Wedding Dress

Wedding Dress 

At the age of 6 years old, my only dream was to be able to be a princess and wear a dress as those I had seen on the Disney Princesses! (Pretty good darn dream if you ask me). So I attempted to draw a picture of myself wearing the dress I wanted. Needless to say, when I look back on that drawing 1) It doesn't look anything like me - I gave myself blonde hair ¬_¬, 2) It didn't look anything like a Disney princess dress :( haha. It was a long red dress with a slit on one side of it :) Since that day I haven't stopped trying to re-create the dress I envisioned I would wear if I were a Disney princess!

In my last year at London College of Fashion, I decided that I would attempt a wedding dress! I wanted it to be big and loud! I drew inspirations from the Ottoman Era, and focused on the Turkish Turbans:

I loved the shape the turban gave, the feathers/plumes and jewels that could be added to the turban worn by those in higher stating ranks. From this, I came up with designs ideas of how I would translate this into a wedding dress. Here are a few samples:

I had never attempted making something that required so much skill and time before so I really had no idea how much work I had set out for myself! I first started off with experimenting with possible fabrics and shapes I would like to create on a mannequin: 

Concept Idea - creating the silhouette

From there, it was pretty much trial and error! My days and nights became one and I had literally no sleep! When I was happy with the silhouette I began sewing the patterns/pieces together. I cannot even tell you how many times I unpicked areas of the dress and re-sewed it till I was happy with the fit and quality! Sometimes I'd have unpicked a certain seam so many times that it was just easier cutting the pattern from scratch and starting that area from the beginning!

Sewing the wedding dress and making sure the dress fits the mannequin.

After many long and strenuous weeks, the dress began taking shape (and that's when I finally let out a sigh of relief, that it might actually look good). So much had to be done! Fitting on models, applying any changes to the general fit, deciding on embellishments, choosing the right fabrics to support one another and in the same colour tone, choosing how I would decorate certain areas of the dress etc. It was A LOT of work:

Different feathers, swarovskis, lace etc.

Dress silhouette

After a month or so the dress was finished and I could finally breathe! It was one of the hardest challenges I had created for myself but it was all worth it. The dress was later asked to be part of an exhibition at the annual National Wedding Show held at the Excel center!

Dress and close-up of detailing

Photoshoot

Dress at Fashion Show

Comment Below and tell me what you guys think! x