All of the pho­tos tak­en on the wed­ding day by Kar­la Korn Pho­tog­ra­phy.

www.karlakorn.com

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Stephanie showed up with her wed­ding dress still in pieces and none of her embroi­dery fin­ished — or even start­ed. Need­less to say we were both more than just a lit­tle bit stressed with her wed­ding day just two weeks away. We had spent over twelve months plan­ning her dress. We had gone over every­thing: the design, fit, fab­ric, embroi­dery, col­or, and coor­di­nat­ing acces­sories. What hap­pened? Why wasn’t it done? The answer is sim­ple. She is Ukrainian.

I have learned over the years from watch­ing my mom, aunts, and oth­er Ukrain­ian women that Ukrain­ian women ALWAYS put every­one else first. (I’m not toot­ing my own horn here. I am only half Ukrain­ian, and can only hope to be as self­less as these women some day.) There­fore I wasn’t sur­prised to learn that Stephanie had spent the last 6 months grow­ing and can­ning veg­eta­bles as wed­ding favors, set­tling into a new house, shop­ping over­seas for Ukrain­ian blous­es for her wed­ding par­ty, and even help­ing anoth­er friend pre­pare for her wed­ding. There­fore it seemed only nat­ur­al she would have embroi­dered her fiancé’s shirt before even begin­ning to sew her own pieces!

So after about a year of plan­ning, we had less than 24 hours to: (1) final­ize a new wed­ding dress design & sew it, (2) fin­ish embroi­der­ing and sewing the groom’s shirt, and (3) fin­ish the acces­sories includ­ing the groom’s Ukrain­ian. But we worked through the night and luck­i­ly fin­ished the dress and shirt before Stephanie left town.

Then about a week before her wed­ding, I cor­rect­ed and fin­ished the rest of her acces­so­ry pieces before express ship­ping it all out to her. (And thanks to my mom she also had a Ukrain­ian embroi­dered garter. Thanks mom!)

The wed­ding dress design changed a lot through the plan­ning & design­ing process. I think we orig­i­nal­ly tried to do some­thing that wasn’t quite pos­si­ble or even as flat­ter­ing as one would like, and as a result we went through many mock-ups and designs.

One thing we knew for cer­tain, Stephanie’s dress would be knee-length and full. She is a Ukrain­ian dancer and want­ed a dress so she could spin in! (Unfor­tu­nate­ly I was unable to see her wed­ding dance, but it looked amaz­ing and FUN in the pho­tos!) The full­ness and pat­tern of the skirt changed through­out the process. We tried a few dif­fer­ent cuts: cir­cle, gath­ered square cut, and semi circular/full skirt cut. After decid­ing upon a silk and wool fab­ric, we made a black silk and wool sam­ple skirt. How­ev­er the full “cir­cle” design seemed too much like a “poo­dle” skirt, so we chose to go with a skirt design that was not as quite as full as “cir­cle” skirt.

I think the fin­ish prod­uct was per­fect! It took a lot of effort, but in the mean­time I made a life long friend!! (And her efforts were well worth it! Her canned goods were delicious!!!)

 Inside Out

I LOVE SILK AND WOOL FABRIC!!!

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Here is a col­lage of just a few of the ideas/photos from the design process:

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“It took a lot of effort, but in the meantime I made a life long friend!!”