Wedding Wednesday: Plans for the Dress

my beautiful mother wearing the dress

Plans for the Dress

I never imagined that I would get to wear my mother's wedding dress. Until this December I couldn't remember having ever even seen the dress other than in pictures, because it wasn't really my mother's dress.

When my Tante Henny (my mother's sister) was getting married in the early eighties, she paid $1000 for a  beautiful chiffon and lace wedding dress. My mom told me she remembers thinking that was an awful lot of money.

Being the practical woman that she is, when my mom got married a few years later she borrowed the dress.

My aunt wearing the dress, I'm the bald one on my mom's lap

Fast forward a little later and it was my Tante Suzy's turn to get married and she too wore the dress. So all three sisters shared the same dress and then it was packed away in my Tante Henny's house for a quarter century.

And then Chris and I got engaged and my aunt very generously offered to let me wear the dress too.

Unfortunately, I'm not as skinny as they were in the eighties and, while I loved the look, it wasn't really what we were going for at our wedding. But, incredibly, my aunt gave me carte blanche to do whatever I want to it.

I had a bunch of different ideas floating around in my head until we met with an amazing seamstress who was able to bring them all together.

Deanna Fokes was highly recommended by a friend and Chris and I are so excited to be working with her. She sketched out a fantastic design to transform the dress my mother and all her sisters wore into something unlike anything I could hope to find in a bridal shop.