All the pretty pictures were taken by Julie Haider.

It’s taken a bit of time to get this final post done, as we are trying to get settled into our new house, but I am so excited to finally share the pictures of this dress.  It was a long process (11 months according to my spreadsheet!), but I am so happy with the final result.  I won’t talk about much of the process here as that is already covered in my previous posts: part 1, part 2, and part 3.  For my post on the bridesmaid dresses, see here.  I also made Wade a vest out of my wedding dress fabric, which I never got around to posting about, but you can see it in the pics.

 

I do want to mention the pattern I used, since I did not show it in the previous posts.  It is an original 1930’s pattern that I got from the Vintage Pattern Lending Library.  This organization copies vintage patterns that have expired copyrights and makes the copies available for purchase.  Here is the link to my pattern.  As you can see, I left off the crazy sleeves, but otherwise my changes were mostly for fit.  Now, back to the pretty pictures!

Our ceremony was at Washington Ranch in New Mexico over Memorial Day Weekend.  We had so much fun seeing all of our friends and family in one place.  Most of the ranch is typical desert, but there is a spring that creates an oasis right by the main ranch building.  It took a bunch of planning to get everything out to the ranch, but the event went off without any major disasters.  We couldn’t have done it without so many of our guests who stepped up to help.

 

I thought my dress turned out really well.  The fit was good, although of course not perfect.  The horsehair braid at the hem gave the skirt great movement, but you could still see it a bit despite my extra strip of fabric at the hem.  The biggest problem with the dress was the hem.  It was at just the right height to get caught by the heel of my shoe.  After that happened a couple times, my delicate handstitching was ripped.  The hem didn’t even hold up through the pre-wedding photos.  I was able to pin it up as a temporary fix, but that only lasted until the dancing started.  I ditched my shoes so that I would stop stepping on the hem and make it even worse, but the first time a pin went into my heel I quickly decided I needed a different solution.  So, I got out my scissors and just cut the damn thing off.  When I hopefully have an opportunity to re-wear the dress, I will re-do the hem slightly shorter.

 

All in all it was a minor problem.  Our wedding was too much fun and too filled with love for something like that to matter.  And I have a bunch of gorgeous photos to remember it with!!