Tailoring My Wedding Dress

In order to get our Bride and Groom shots I had to tailor my wedding dress-It has an empire waist and is pretty figure friendly. I have lost all my baby weight, but my ribs have expanded a couple inches, so the zipper would only go half way up.

(Jon has his own tux, from high school when he sang with the A Cappella and Madrigals, and he STILL fits it perfectly!)

I didn't have much time and didn't know what to do. Luckily, my dress was simple. I asked some friends and my mom for advice on what to do. My mom suggested a lace up back. So I went and bought materials, and then looked online to see how in the heck I would actually do it.

I found this blog that made things so easy: http://couturesmith.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
Inspired by this picture, I knew exactly what I would do:


This is what she did, so I followed her:
Draw a grid (2 cm wide, 1 cm high) to keep all the loops uniform and pin the cord.



This becomes my work space,until my craft room gets finished. Zac is playing "Playhouse Disney" computer games with headphones on, while max naps and I listen to pandora

Then fold back the extra fabric and sew the loops to the only workspace on the dress, the back of the invisible zipper. (I wasn't going to deal with taking the zipper out and putting lace up in its place, plus it was easier to use the zipper for as far as it would go and then just put the lace up in where I needed-did I mention I had very little time, and skill . . .this is just a makeshift way to fix it without it looking horrendous!)



And WAH LA! It really was that easy. Then I stitched a modesty panel on to the interfacing and re-basted the interfacing to the zipper.


The hardest part is lacing it up!

This was initially laced up too tight so the ribbon doesn't look very pretty, and I didn't have time to fix it. But this is basically the effect. What do ya think?




A sufficient fix for a non-seamstress, with very little time, and my husband making the measurements while I was wearing the dress . . .