Wedding Details: The Dress

I am so excited to be doing this next portion of my wedding details series!  Today I am sharing the dress!  My wedding dress is honestly my favorite detail from my wedding.  I know I haven't gotten into the details of my wedding decor, but my wedding was vintage-inspired.  I love vintage, antiques, and hearing old stories from parents and grandparents.  This leads me to my beautiful and unique wedding dress...

My wedding dress was my grandmother's wedding dress from 1960!

Just that sentence alone makes me smile!  Yes, I wore my grandmother's wedding dress from my mom's side.  My mom has had the dress for years, and it has stayed in such great condition.  I remember my mom bringing it out every now and then to show me it when I was younger.  I even tried it on as a young girl.  It was much too large, but that never stopped me from twirling around imagining my own wedding one day.  She always told me that I could do whatever I wanted with it when that day came.  

I did alter the dress to make it more of an ideal dress for myself, but I must say, the dress was already beautiful to begin with.  It was solid lace with a sweetheart neckline and thick straps (not sleeves.)  The dress also came with a solid sheer lace long-sleeved jacket.  So, unlike most dresses from that era, it did not have long sleeves, rather it came with a lace jacket to go over it.  This made it easier to alter, as there were no long sleeves to deal with.  Aside from that fact that this dress is from 1960, what makes it even more unique is that it was handmade by my grandmother and her mother (my great grandmother.)  

The changes we made were actually quite minimal.  Like I mentioned, I loved the dress to begin with.  We had a wonderful seamstress help us with the alterations, and here is a short run-down of what we did:

• We made the dress fit me to start.  It had to be taken in and made quite a bit shorter.  (I'm only 5'3'')
• Since the dress already had a sweetheart neckline, which was my absolute ideal, we just had the straps taken off to make it strapless.  The sweetheart neckline only had to be altered slightly after the dress was taken in.
• I ordered a pink satin ribbon from a website called Your Dream Dress.  It was inexpensive and just what I was looking for.  I love bows and pink, so this was the perfect way to complete making the dress my own.  

And ta-da!  My dream dress was complete!  

I created this collage to show the lace and other details of the dress.  So lovely.  

And, here are some more lovely dress shots.  (Photography by Stephanie Fry)

 I created this collage as well, showing myself on my wedding day and my grandmother on her wedding day.  

I'm going to wrap this blog up with two pictures of newlyweds. (Myself and my husband, and my grandparents!)  

If anyone is considering altering an older dress, I highly recommend it.  It's a perfect way to get your dream dress, and an even better way to wear a dress that has meaning.  

Thanks for reading!

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