I’m not gonna lie, I have enjoyed this Wedding Wednesday theme and sharing pieces of our wedding with everyone!  Your wedding dress is one of the most  memorable items in a wedding and a great way for your personality to shine.  Plus you dream about your wedding dress for years, so I’m excited to talk about the way my dress came to be.

Last April, Mom came to Charleston for the weekend to go wedding dress shopping. We made an appointment at Gown Boutique of Charleston in Mt. Pleasant, and decided to just wing it from there.  Jessica led my appointment and I tried on a whole variety of dresses – when else would you have the chance to?  Ultimately I knew I wanted something “flowy” and that I could eat in (priorities), and after trying on multiple styles, that was still the case.

When we were looking around I saw a sample that had a beautiful, flowy bottom, but a boring top.  Jessica mentioned that they had a few separate tops and we could see if I liked any of those to use instead of the top the dress came with.  Well the scallop lace top with straps was a winner… I lit up when I put it on, and to make the decision even easier, our first dance “Thinking of You” started playing on the radio when I walked out in it.

I was sold on the idea of using the bottom of the sample dress, and a completely different top.  Trying it on was interesting because I basically had two tops on and you could see them both, so ultimately I was banking on an image I had on my head.

In January I went for my first fitting and we started figuring out how to make two pieces into one.  The first time I saw the dress as one piece was in March, and I’ll admit I was a little nervous, but I got the dress on and it seemed like it had been one piece the whole time!

Taylor came to my final fitting and hearing him say it was perfect was just what I needed since I really value his opinion.  I was so excited to send my mom and sister pictures, and to finally wear it in May!

Here’s the top of the original dress which has become scrap material:

And here’s my custom dress.   I love how the bottom caught in the wind during the ceremony, and managed to capture my personality without being too girly or formal.

Shout out to Gown Boutique & Jessica for being creative and coming up with a unique solution to create the dress of my dreams!  Only a few people knew the story of the dress and they were shocked to learn it originally had a different top.

Funny story: So I kept joking about how much pizza I could eat before the wedding and still fit in my dress… At my last fitting the dress was a little loose which was great since I had been working out, but I also took that to mean I had some leeway with food.  When we were putting the dress on before pictures Mom and Lauren were having issues getting it zipped.  Maggie came to the rescue and we got it on.  It ended up fitting perfectly, but there was a moment of “oh crap” in there.  Then I joked that the answer about how much pizza I could eat was minus one.  That Friday afternoon pepperoni pie was a little too much…