My Sister’s Wedding Dress for Late August

My sis­ter moved to Italy sev­er­al years ago. Of course, she fell in love in the Eter­nal City (of love) and about a month ago became all at once engaged!

But there is no love like fam­i­ly love, so she came back to cel­e­brate her wed­ding. Rome is beau­ti­ful, but there’s noth­ing more joy­ful than a din­ner with the whole fam­i­ly, nor any­thing more roman­tic than spend­ing the day with your new hus­band (new broth­er!) in the place where you grew up.

So…the wed­ding is August 25, less than a month away. She is back in the States plan­ning the affair. Pri­or­i­ty? What to wear! Even though she wants just a small, inti­mate fam­i­ly Mass and cer­e­mo­ny, the dress must be wor­thy of the occa­sion. After all, you only choose one man to love, for­ev­er! And there is noth­ing more excit­ing than see­ing his face when you walk in wearing…okay, I’ll stop!

In less than a month, and on a lim­it­ed bud­get, I’m mak­ing not only the bride’s dress, but the Moth­er-of-the-Bride’s   dress and my own as well. One trip north to a tex­tile out­let was all we need­ed to find the per­fect fab­ric. With­out the fab­ric in hand there is sim­ply no way to cre­ate a dress, no over­all vision of the art of dress­ing some­one. We had only an idea––simple ele­gance and a good line. After com­ing across a gor­geous ivory silk charmeuse and lace and silk taffe­ta, we lit­er­al­ly saw the dress right in front of us laid out on the draft­ing table (or at least, I did). In the end, with an unex­pect­ed break with the norm, we decid­ed to cre­ate a two-peice set. The silk falls so nice­ly it was hard to resist the high-waist­ed skirt with godet and a clas­sic silk cap-sleeved top.

In my head it’s sim­ply stun­ning! Stay tuned for more pho­tos as this wed­ding dream slow­ly becomes a reality…