Dress Preparation

So I am going to brave it. I have given up on the idea of losing x amount of pounds for the wedding - I weigh 56kg and that's that - and will use whatever fat I carry on me now to guide me through the shape of the dress.

A colleague of mine has been so kind as to lend me some of her wedding things. I asked her whether I could buy her old underskirt of her and she agreed, then showed up with veils and dresses in addition to that! One of the dresses was highly interesting and, amazingly, even suited me, so I will use it as a guide for my autumn dress.

I will jot down what I learned here, so I don't forget:

The corset: undoubtedly the most interesting thing to look at for me. It had two layers of fabric - one cotton, one satin. 8 pieces altogether. The bones felt like plastic - nothing a good cable tie wouldn't replace, but contrary to my previous thoughts, it didn't really seem to matter, as the dress was tight enough and would have held my stomach in anyway. I counted 12 bones, paired up. My partner wrapped me up in duct tape the other day, so I have a perfect imprint of my upper body, excluding, of course, seam allowance.

The skirt, again, was two layers of satin. It had an extra layer of white organza and a light, green fabric added to it, both gathered just underneath the corset on one side. I found it interesting just how easy the gathering seemed and will definitely use that when I put the finishing touches to me dress.

The pattern on the bottom hem was raised - I liked it on this dress, but as mine should be fairly plain, I doubt I will use it. I may, though, add a fairly large hem on the organza - somehow, it worked very well.

Now the bits that I'd change:
The corset was zip-up at the back, meaning that I was unable to close it properly - any weight gain between now and the big day would mean I could trash the dress. Not good. Lace-up it is.
And, once again, the pictures I took with the dress on confirmed that I am just not the type for boob tube. Cover up my arms already!

Tiara time

After a few hours of inventing new swear words to suit my situation - namely, that my first attempt at making a tiara ended up in a huge crown and my second was still way too massive - I finally managed to pull off a small, understating tiara, from pearl beads, tiara-making flowers, diamond beads, silver-plated wire and a few other beads I found in my jewellery making box.





The glue gun, which has already become my best friend in the card-making process lately, was useful in ensuring the wire ends did not end up getting stuck in and ultimately damaging my hair.

Oops, looks like the in-laws just arrived. Future Mr is sleeping on the sofa next to me, better stop writing and waking him up.

Edited:
What did I do?
I bought a plain silver-plated hairband, used 4mm silver-plated wire to stick on 1 large bead or up to 5 smaller ones at a time and simply attached them by wrapping the wire around the hairband as tightly as I could. I started with the flowers and spaced them out fairly evenly, then added the large pearls and used ever smaller beads to hide the wiring at the top - no-one will see the bottom, so that doesn't really matter.
I have fine hair and it gets caught in things really easily, so after trying the tiara on once I decided that, despite my best efforts, the wire still stuck out at the ends, potentially leading to pain and torn hair. That's when I used the glue gun to smooth the bottom bits out. It worked a treat, as long as I made sure that it didn't dry too thickly.