Scott and Tina after the ceremony

In addition to the traditional vows both Tina and I wrote personal vows to each other. Here are the vows:

From Scott to Tina

Tina I love you and promise to continue loving you forever. Our relationship will be a place of security and friendship from which we both may grow. I cherish your creativity and will provide you with the support to be courageous with your talents. We will face the challenges that fate hands us together just as we will celebrate our fortunes together.

From Tina to Scott

Scott, I love you and promise to continue to loving you forever. I know my life with you will be filled with love, laughter, and trust. I will always encourage you to be true to yourself. We will continue to grow together, and fall in love a little more each day. I promise to love and support you in all of our adventures in life.

Now we’re off to the reception!

The Dress

When we last discussed “the dress”, I had received the mock dress, and a large piece of paper to draw the design for the dress. After several tries of taking measurements and realizing that some of my undergarments were ill-fitting (thanks to a video skype with Katherine), the dress was out of my decision making realm and into Katherine at Whirling Turban’s creative and capable hands. I was a little timid in my design as I know nothing about dressmaking, and I certainly didn’t want to frustrate Katherine and wanted her to be able to express her talents. I drew something simple following her instructions. My first design was very line oriented which actually worked against how the ribbon design worked for her dresses so I tried toning it down a bit. She took my simple design and ran with it…I love it when people get to enjoy a project and I hope Katherine enjoyed working on mine. She requested to take artistic license and I totally agreed. It also meant that I really didn’t know what the final was going to look like. To some this may have been a bit scary, but seeing how talented whirling turban staff are, I was simply more excited to see what they would come up with.

When I was told the dress had been shipped, it was like waiting for Christmas. Turns out my wonderful post office claimed to have given me a notice which I NEVER saw. After a bit of tracking, I noticed that the dress had been here for 9 days at the post office….immediately went to rescue the dress that morning. Scott made me wait yet another hour before I could open it since he had to film me opening it. It sat on my office chair…waiting…..and just sitting there unopened. Try not to laugh at my hair in the video.

The first picture right after opening the dress box.

One last thing I need to do is to get the dress hemmed. I’ve contacted one lady but haven’t heard back yet… so spoiler alert….below :).

The Crinoline

The other big thing to talk about is the crinoline. Whirling Turban recommended a place for crinoline, but because of the color of my dress, I wanted to find something that would go perfectly. White was out, since the dress ribbon is black. Black was not ideal because it is my wedding and that much I think would have been disturbing. I wanted to be different, but not shove it in people’s face.

I found a wonderful shop on Etsy (if you don’t know Etsy, get to know Etsy. Your life will only improve) called Swank Underpinnings run by a lady named Ann Swank. I contacted her and sent her a piece of my sample fabric. She custom dyed and made a crinoline just for me. She also took the time to find just the right color of ribbon for the dress (which the ribbon makes all the difference if you look at plain crinoline versus Ann’s creations). She made a 4 tier crinoline which is a bit fluffier than the 2 tier. She’s made some for rockabilly weddings where the dresses stick way out with stiff tulle, but we decided the softer crinoline would work best for me.

Crinoline made by Ann Swank of  Swank Underpinnings

The final conclusion

I absolutely loved this experience. I feel my dress expresses me rather than some tired tradition that I have no connection to. I would recommend this to anyone who is actively interested in making a dress that is unique. I do think being web and computer savvy helped a lot though. Definitely brush up on the interwebs communication like Skype and Google video/chat if you want do this. The video Skype with Katherine was a huge turning point for the dress IMHO and made me feel very good about the dress progress.

Whirling Turban is a sponsor on that site where I quickly became enamored of the retro style dresses that were fun and not at all the fluffy white overkill gowns that saturate the wedding industry. No offense to women who love these, they just aren’t me, and I was dreading the process of going to a boutique type place and trying gown after gown on and not being happy about it. I never wear white, why should one of the most important days of my life force me to dress up like someone else’s idea of how I should be? (I took it very personally, but shouldn’t I?)

It all started with an email. Which being a web designer, I loves me some email communication. It’s unobtrusive and you can document everything. These dressmakers feel the same way. I got a quick response the next day (due to time differences which takes a little getting used to but not long) explaining the whole process and what I needed to do to get started. The word “corset” was introduced and I began the process of buying the undergarments…including a corset. Scott helped me with measurements (a true test of a man’s love ;) ).

All payment with Whirling Turban goes through Google checkout (again internet love) and she does have people in the states who work for her regarding this as well for those who haven’t grasped the world of google checkout. I did get to speak to Katherine via Google voice before ever putting a down payment towards my dress. It was agreed that I would have her design a custom dress for me in a non traditional fabric for wedding. She has several styles of bodices and skirts that can be combined to your perfect style. They do create gorgeous dresses in white, but I preferred the bright colors they offer in a simliar style. They create their own fabric that be found no where else and it it simply beautiful to the touch. What’s even better is that Katherine loved the idea of me adding my own personal touch to the dress in a ribbon applique. She’s created other designs, but me being me….was open to me drawing something specific.

I’m not quite sure when I decided on peacock feathers, but the idea of using them in my centerpieces so they could be created way ahead of time appealed to me, so why not an abstract design of them on the dress too? Here’s where the video comes in. After a few weeks of waiting, a smallish but weighty package arrived….

I thought it would be fun to document my reaction for the WT ladies. Then it dawned on me to just document the whole process. The video was an impromptu decision with the iphone. I’ll go into more detail about the contents of the box.

The corset: I purchased the corset elsewhere, but me being new to corset buying the corset was actually too big and the WT ladies agreed to fix the corset for me while creating the test dress.

The test dress: No it’s not really that color. it’s only a test, but I think the color allows them to see better what needs to be fixed on the dress. I need to try on the dress and take pictures of me in it so they know where to make alterations.

The tissue paper: it’s actually a full size tracing od the dress pattern for me to draw my actual design for the dress (see below for my start for initial inspiration.) My first drawings it turns out wouldn’t work well as they gave me specific instructions on how my design should work while giving me creative license.

A sample of the applique on the actual fabric: I forgot to put in the step where I went to find embroidery floss to find a contrast for the ribbon on the dress. It turns out black was the best option. We won’t use too much but it was the best choice.

I started doing internet searches on peacocks and abstract solutions and created an idea board: