Julia contacted me last spring after purchasing a beautiful sample wedding gown from a local bridal shop.
Buying a sample gown or wedding dress off the rack can be a wonderful option. You get to see the exact gown you are purchasing, try it on, and take it home without waiting months for a new gown to be ordered.
For Julia, timing was especially important. She needed her wedding gown sooner than the standard ordering timeframe, so finding such a beautiful dress off the rack was a great solution.
However, sample and off-the-rack wedding gowns usually still need alterations, cleaning, and a bustle. If the sample isn't particularly close to your size, the cost of alterations can also become an important part of the overall price of the gown.
Julia's soft white satin ball gown appeared to fit quite well when she first brought it to my atelier. But once we began fitting it carefully, there was actually quite a bit of work needed to make the gown fit properly.
Why Wedding Gowns With Sleeves Can Require More Alterations
One thing I often tell brides is that the more fitted coverage a wedding gown has, the more areas there are that may need to be adjusted.
This is particularly true with sleeves.
Very few people fit perfectly into a standard dress size. A bride's bust apex, shoulder width, arm circumference, torso length, waist, and other proportions won't necessarily correspond to the proportions used to draft a standard-size gown.
On a simple sleeveless dress, there may be fewer areas affected by these differences. Add a fitted sleeve, however, and the relationship between the bodice, shoulder, armhole, and sleeve becomes much more important.
This is something worth keeping in mind while wedding dress shopping. If you love sleeves, detailed handwork, or silk gowns, don't necessarily avoid them, but understand that they can require more specialized alterations than a simpler sleeveless gown.
Rebuilding Julia's Beaded Sleeves
Julia's short sleeves were too tight and needed additional room.
The difficulty was that these weren't plain sleeves. They were covered in beautiful dimensional floral appliqué and beading that continued across the shoulders and upper bodice.
To enlarge them properly, I first had to remove the handwork from the front bodice, shoulders, and sleeves.
I then cut new sleeves using silk tulle, fitted the new sleeves to Julia, and began rebuilding the embellishment by hand.
Because the new sleeves had more ease than the originals, there was now more surface area to cover. The bridal shop was able to provide an additional sample piece of the beaded appliqué, which gave me the extra material I needed to fill in the newly added areas.
The appliqué and beading were then carefully hand sewn back onto the gown so that the new sleeves looked like they belonged to the original design.
Lowering the Neckline
I also lowered Julia's neckline by approximately half an inch.
Half an inch doesn't sound like a dramatic alteration and it wasn't meant to be. But small changes can make a surprising difference in the proportions of a wedding gown. Lowering the neckline just slightly opened the bodice and created a more flattering line on Julia without changing the overall character of the dress.
Normally, making such a small adjustment to a heavily embellished gown can involve quite a bit of work because the appliqué and beading first have to be carefully removed and then reapplied by hand. In Julia's case, however, I was already removing the appliqué and beading in this area to reconstruct the sleeves and alter the bust. Since the gown was already opened up, it didn't add much additional work to make this small change at the same time.
This is one of the advantages of planning bridal alterations together rather than treating each alteration as a completely separate job. When several areas of a gown need work, sometimes a small additional change can be incorporated naturally into the larger reconstruction.
The Unexpected Challenge: Reconstructing the Bust
The most challenging part of Julia's alterations turned out to be something I hadn't initially expected.
The bust apex was sitting too high.
Initially, I approached this as a contouring adjustment. But when I basted the new fit into the gown, the seams weren't laying as cleanly as they should.
Something else was happening.
Because Julia's dress had been a sample gown, it had spent time hanging in the bridal shop and being tried on by different brides. The fabric through the bust and center-front panels had become stretched and distorted.
Simply taking in or reshaping the existing seams wasn't going to give me the clean result I wanted.
So I took the front apart.
I detached the front bodice from the skirt and removed the front portion of the waistband so I could properly access the construction underneath.
I then worked on restoring the shape of the satin panels, including carefully preshrinking and straightening the grain before reconstructing the seams.
Once the fabric was behaving properly again, I was able to reshape the bust and reposition the apex where it belonged.
This is a good example of why bridal alterations sometimes become more involved once the work begins. What initially appears to be a simple fit adjustment can actually be the result of something happening within the fabric or underlying construction.
Adding Better Internal Structure
While reconstructing the bodice, I also replaced and supplemented the internal support with stronger metal boning.
The new boning helped maintain the shape I had created through the bust and prevented those carefully reconstructed seams from stretching out again.
I also added an internal waist stay.
A waist stay is particularly valuable in strapless wedding gowns, but it can also improve the fit of a gown with sleeves. It helps anchor the dress around the waist and allows the front and sides of the bodice to sit securely against the body while relieving some of the tension at the center-back zipper.
The bride doesn't see this structure from the outside, but these internal details can make an enormous difference in how securely and cleanly a wedding gown fits.
Hemming a Satin Ball Gown
Once the bodice and sleeves were fitting properly, I moved on to the hem.
Julia's gown had a bagged horsehair hem, along with multiple layers of lining and petticoat underneath.
A horsehair braid hem helps support the shape of a full ball gown skirt and gives the bottom of the dress its beautiful sweep. Hemming this type of gown requires opening and reconstructing the finished hem rather than simply turning up the bottom of the skirt.
Each layer underneath also needed to be adjusted to the appropriate length.
(The gown is bustled in the photo.)
A 19-Point Ballroom Bustle
For the train, Julia chose a ballroom bustle.
Unlike a traditional bustle that visibly gathers or lifts portions of the train, a ballroom bustle is designed to bring the train underneath so that the gown appears much closer to floor length all the way around.
With a full satin ball gown, that requires quite a few attachment points to distribute all of that fabric properly.
Julia's finished bustle had approximately 19 points. (I can't remember the exact amount. Ballroom bustles usually have around 17-25 points, depending on the size of the train.)
It takes more work to create and secure a bustle with that many points, but on a gown like this, the result is worth it. Once bustled, Julia could move and dance without carrying the full train behind her while maintaining the beautiful shape of the ball gown.
The Finished Wedding Gown
Julia's gown is a good example of why the words "it already fits" don't always tell the whole story with an off-the-rack or sample wedding dress.
From a distance, the gown looked like it fit when Julia purchased it. But achieving the finished fit involved enlarging and reconstructing the beaded sleeves, hand sewing the appliqué back into place, lowering the neckline, completely opening and reconstructing the front bodice, repositioning the bust apex, adding stronger boning and an internal waist stay, hemming the horsehair satin skirt and underlayers, and creating an approximately 19-point ballroom bustle.
The result still looked like the gown Julia originally fell in love with, it simply fit her.
The gown itself was beautiful. The soft white satin and dimensional beaded floral appliqué caught and reflected the light wonderfully, particularly across the shoulders and sleeves.
It was also such a pleasure working with Julia. She always came into my atelier with so much joy, and she was one of the wonderful brides I especially enjoyed working with this past summer.
If you're considering purchasing a sample or off-the-rack wedding gown, don't be discouraged by the possibility of alterations. A sample gown can be an excellent option, particularly when you are working with a shorter wedding timeline. Just remember to consider the condition, size, construction, and potential alteration costs when deciding whether a particular gown is the right purchase for you.
If you already have your wedding gown and need alterations, you can learn more about Bridal Alterations at the Anagrassia Atelier near South Bend and Notre Dame and inquire about a bridal fitting.
For brides interested in having a gown designed and made specifically for them, learn more about Custom Wedding Gowns by Anagrassia.
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