The Wedding Story

THE WEDDING DRESS STORY

This has been an experience that I will never forget. Many of you have heard probably more about it than you have wanted to, but that is just the way you do with friends .... bore them to death! Adelsia Brown, the manager of Sewing Today, has helped me through this in ways that none of you would believe! Adelsia, thanks!

My daughter informed me just before Thanksgiving that she was getting married on December 21 (the same year!) and that she wanted just a simple wedding. Ok, sounded good to me, I could whip out a simple dress and still have time for all the things that are normally done, in this family, by Christmas, with no huge amount of stress. Oh yeah, sounded great at the time!

She showed up about a week later with a pattern which was beautiful, fairly complicated, and totally inappropriate to her figure. My daughter suffers from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which for you who don't know too much about it, it is not pleasant. Your body becomes quite distended in the abdominal area, and most patterns have to be altered to allow for this. She also is somewhat overweight, which also goes along with PCOS. Enough about that, if you want to learn more, there are a bazillion sites with that information. I finally convinced her that this dress style would not look good on her, found a very similar pattern and she decided that Mom was probably right!

We agreed upon McCall's 8043. Nice looking dress, lines can be dealt with to accommodate the size changes.

Now we embarked upon the fun of measurements! Oh that is not fun! We took her measurements for quite a while, and I suddenly realized that this was not going to be easy. The largest size on the pattern was about 12 inches smaller than she was in some areas, larger than she was in other areas and about right in a couple of places. Oh boy, I called Adelsia for help. She explained to me, how to do the changes, I did them and then went to the fabric store and bought a bunch of muslin. Remember that when you are making something that HAS to fit, unless you are one of the fortunate few for whom patterns actually fit, make your garment from muslin or something cheap first!

As you can see from the pattern picture, above, this dress has those nasty curved seams on the front. Whoever invented those, should be killed! I did manage to get them to go together quite easily which was a welcome surprise.

At this point in time, the muslin was ready for the fitting. I'm good with numbers, so I figured that it would fit like a dream, I would use the altered pattern I had made, and we could go shopping for the real dress material. WRONG! The armholes were too small, the neck area was too big, the waist area was too small, but the length at the waist was just perfect. Aha, a ray of sunshine, at least I knew by now that this would be the sewing project of my life! As they say, back to the drawing board. I made these changes, and by golly, it fit fine. Whew!

She went fabric shopping and I went fabric shopping....never together, she works nights, I work days. This could work! She found something she liked in one of the stores, I went to look at it, didn't think it would look right with this dress. We both kept looking and looking and looking. Ok we are only 3 weeks from this wedding and don't even have the material yet? I went to a fabric store that I had never heard of and there it was .... absolutely perfect! 100% cotton, white with a moiré print on it. This was exactly what I had been looking for! Well I hoped she liked it because I bought it! Got lucky again, she loved it.

I also bought some of that slippery lining fabric, because this dress has a lining which is sewn together right with the main dress pieces and also another lining, which is made separately and then sewn into the dress. My mother didn't raise a stupid kid....I decided to make the lining first, just as a double check to make sure that all fit like the muslin indicated that it would. Oh no! Three inches too big at back of dress top, gaped at the front--oh lordie, Adelsia help! But it fit at the waist, the length is still right to the waist...all is not lost. I went to get some more lining fabric and found some really nice stuff (Pongee--I think it is called) and it wasn't slippery like that other stuff! I really don't think it is for lining, but it worked and was a dream to sew on.

Pattern got altered again. OK, how do you take 3 inches out of the back top and leave the waist alone? Darts! I took out 1" on each side going straight down about 3-1/2 inches over from where the zipper would be, with a really long (9-1/2") dart...took the other 1/2" out in a diagonal short dart just where the neckline began its curve to the shoulder. These alterations could not be done on the pattern, they had to be done on the garment or it would throw the straightness of the zipper off. The front was a bit easier, I could do it on the pattern. Took a 3/4" tuck in the pattern piece at the neckline, pattern still laid fairly straight (close enough)....now we are getting somewhere!

I hadn't done anything with the sleeves yet, but I knew that there would be some adjustments that would have to be made at the underarm, or it wouldn't fit right in the armhole. Well duh! Everyone knows that! We'll worry about the sleeves later.

Lace, did anyone pick out the lace? Nope. Ok, she has a day off at the same time as I do, so let's go find the lace. We found it in the first shop we stopped at! Luck is with us on this day! I have no idea how much is needed because I forgot to look before leaving home and taking the pattern envelope along, would have been entirely too easy. Let's get three yards, this stuff isn't that expensive. We actually only needed about 1/2 a yard, so I have lots of pretty lace. Ok, now how about trim. Pretty stuff! The sleeve has a lace overlay from the cap to a point about 1/3 of the way down the sleeve.

This little trim with the pearls would be nice for that. We found another bolt of trim that would just be perfect for around the neck. Oh yeah, a zipper would be nice---I remembered that one...22"! I think we are on our way, got all the fabric and all the other stuff, let's build a dress!

The dress is done, with the lace on the front bodice and back and it looks really elegant. Now comes the time for the sleeves to be figured out. We are combining the sleeve pattern for the actual dress, with the sleeve pattern for the one she originally wanted. Not a problem, we'll just match them up and change the bottom. She comes over at 7AM when she gets off work and I am just getting ready to go to work. We put the bodice on--hey it fits---hold the sleeve pattern up, and 'holy moley' it is the right length! How can that be? Something is right for a change. I'm so exited that I almost had to stay home from work to celebrate!

The sleeves are done, bridal trim (the buttonhole thingys) is done, all the handwork of turning up this nifty point and stitching it down is done. The point is perfect! Lucked out again! Put the sleeves in the dress, nice finish inside so it will be really smooth. Another 7AM fitting---OH NO! The sleeves are 2" too long! OK, now I know what is going on...this kid is morphing! There just can't be any other explanation. I check the measurements and they are right on! To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why this happened and probably never will.

Seems now that there are two choices to rectify this sleeve problem. Put her on a rack and stretch her arms, or figure some way to take 2" out of the length and make it look like it is supposed to be that way. She didn't go for the rack idea (said there wasn't enough time), so now I am faced with how the heck do I do this. There is a nasty little tuck in the back of the sleeve so that her elbow can actually bend while she is wearing the dress --- this gets in the way of every single thing I try. My original idea was to match the diagonal of the "V" of lace --- won't work, it would be almost the full length of the sleeve....how about making a "V" going in the opposite direction from the "V" of lace. Yep, that is doable! Not easy, but doable. Here is this darn tuck again....right in the way. I finally managed to do a bit of manipulation of the sleeve, used the rotary cutter and just sliced the bottom part off. Hey this worked pretty slick. OK need to make another cut 2" below that......wait a minute...if I cut two inches out, I am going to lose 3-1/4" allowing for seam allowance. Someone was sitting on my shoulder before I made that cut! Out comes the calculator, we need to take out 3/4"! It worked--when put back together, they are exactly 2" shorter than they were.

Most of the rest of the dress went exactly the way you would hope it would work. The zipper went in like a dream...the top and waist seam actually match perfectly. Another 7AM fitting, we throw a sheet on the floor so the dress won't get dirty and she stands there, while I'm down on the floor sticking pins in where the hem will be. She wants it to just touch the floor...it will ALMOST touch the floor unless she wears some really high heels!

Now we are ready for the hem. The width around the bottom of the skirt is around 180"....I'm not going to live long enough to put that up by hand. Wait, this is cotton, the hem stitch on the sewing machine should work just fine. You knew there was going to be another problem, didn't you? My trusty machine all of a sudden decides that it doesn't like the poly thread with the cotton core that it has always used. It absolutely will NOT do the little zig that hops over to catch the hem. It skips that stitch every time. I tried rethreading, I tried a new needle, I moved the tension every way except outside and no matter what I did, it would not stitch that little zig! The needle went over fine, but the stitch failed to catch...just a nice loop. Now what do I do? One last try, I have a spool of cotton thread, let's try that and see what happens....glory bee, it liked it! I had to tighten the tension up, but it sewed like a dream! I got the entire hem put up in 15 minutes, before work!

Except for the handwork the dress is now finished, and I am one happy mother-in-law to be! The trim is all on, now it is time for the buttons. I had bought pearl buttons with shanks (hate those things) and they looked horrid with it! Now what do we do? She has a day off, she can go find her own darned buttons. She found these and they are just absolutely perfect! Why didn't I see these? I could have saved a bunch of money, because they sure don't give away buttons these days! Sixteen buttons to sew on...Yikes! I can do about two before my left hand cramps---I must have a death grip on that material!

The dress is done, ironed, ready to go. Oh oh, we know she can't just throw it in her car... got to have a dress bag. You would think that you could find one of those in any store... guess again! We finally found one, not long enough, so I just chopped the bottom out of it. The dress hangs out about 12", but if she is careful, she won't drag it in the street! This is just two days before the wedding and of course it is pouring down rain. I still don't know how she did it, but she got it in and out of her car without either getting it wet or dirty.

I had planned to end this story here with just a picture of the happy couple at their wedding, but this wedding day was one to remember, more so than are most wedding days.

At 9 AM on the day of the wedding, Frank (the groom) called me. Panic was in his voice and I could hear Tracey coming totally unglued in the background. It seems that the man who was supposed to be doing her hair in about fifteen minutes, had taken a bad fall and was on his way to the hospital (at least he called her). Sunday morning not a lot of hair salons are open, but there has to be at least one in an area of 250,000 people! She found one, and although the picture doesn't really show it well, her hair looked great! Was the perfect "do"!

Now you say, the crisis has passed, nothing else will happen, right? The story is going to end with a picture of the newlyweds. The story will end with a picture, but the hair problem turned out to be only the minor crisis.

The wedding was scheduled to begin at 3:15. By 3:00 the Justice of the Peace had not yet arrived. Ok, the place is out in the boonies and sort of hard to find....that is, it would normally be hard to find, but there was a huge bunch of gold and white balloons tied at the mailbox, so only the blind or severely impaired would have a hard time missing it. At 3:15 the JP still hadn't showed up. Tracey was pretty close to tears, I understand that our son (the Best Man) was having a difficult time convincing Frank that all was well and keeping him from jumping out the window and diving into the McKenzie River which is only about 100 feet behind the house. I think he was convinced that Tracey had changed her mind and that no one was going to tell him!

Barry, the host of the wedding, got me off to one side and said, "I think we may have a solution.". He quickly explained that the pastor for the church across the highway, lives right by the church. He went over there to see if the man would be gracious enough to "bail" us out of this situation. Barry was back in about three minutes, beaming from ear to ear, gave me a high 5 and said that the pastor would be there in just a few minutes.

We are going to owe this man big time! Then we heard the motorcycle. Oh no, I'm thinking, are we going to have a pastor in leather and chains? I didn't know what kind of a church this was, and there are some slightly left of center ones around. No problem, he was dressed in a suit, very calm and sedate! Whew!

The ceremony was wonderful, including the fact that Dad handed Tracey off to Frank, long before he was supposed to. The pastor even found humor in this, and he told Tracey that he was certain that her dad approved of her choice as quickly as he gave her away.

Now you can see the picture of the happy couple. I certainly hope that you never have to go through this in the way that we did. But let me tell you it was all worth it. We have gained a new son who is one of the most outstanding individuals that I have ever met. Tracey made a great choice and everything (eventually) turned out wonderfully. I can safely say, that no one who was at that wedding, will ever forget it.

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