The Dress Catastrophe—The True Story of My Wedding Dress

THE STORY:

One day a girl made her own wedding dress and then dropped it off for a final press at the dry cleaners. An unknown dry cleaners. It’s just a press, right? Definitely not. Read on.

I had it just the way I wanted it. My groom had nixed my simple A-line design (“wedding dresses should be poofy,” he said), so I had added far too much taffeta tucks and crinoline. But I was so happy with it. This was truly a girly dress to end all dresses.

So the dry cleaners charged me an astronomical amount, but that’s ok. It’s a wedding dress, right?

Then I picked it up a few days later, and went into shock. It was ripped up! See all the little tucks on the skirt? About half of those had been torn out. It looked like someone had stepped on the hem and torn out all the tucks on that side. (And they would have had to step really hard—they were seriously sewed in there!) To add to the problem, they’d tried to haphazardly sew a few back in (in the wrong place, of course) leaving an extra two feet of material on the whole right side of my dress.

I spent this ceremonious moment with two wonderful girlfriends, who are the subject of this week’s “true story” blog—Susan Politano and Tara Finedore. Thank goodness for them! We came back after dinner, around 11pm, and took the dress out of its glorious wrapping and got our first glimpse of its destruction. It was a mess! This bride, who had stayed calmer than everyone, including the groom, freaked out. Who wouldn’t??

After they calmed me down, they each grabbed a needle and buried themselves in the massive taffeta skirt, helping me re-sew all the tucks. It took hours to get them lined up properly, since I had hemmed the skirt to accommodate the tucks, but these girls were soldiers. Plowed right through.

THE TWIST:

Here’s the best part. All of this went down the NIGHT BEFORE my wedding. Yep, that’s right. That means Tara, Susan, and myself stayed up till 2am rocking out to Christian praise and worship music, giggling like idiots, and sewing tucks into a ridiculously poofy skirt. We started the night super tired, but my friends didn’t stop till the problem was resolved, and the bride relieved.

Truly, truly, amazing girls. I never would have walked down the aisle in a finished dress without them! I mean, really. Who stays up till 2am sewing?? Two awesome friends, that’s who 🙂

The beautiful dress pics on this page are all the artwork of the talented Tara Finedore.