A little background

This is a journal of my experience making my daughter Anna’s wedding gown. My husband has encouraged me to document all this so here goes.

I remember when she sent me the gorgeous picture of a designer gown last February that one of her girlfriends had sent to her. It was absolutely stunning and I remember thinking how she would look just like a fairy princess in it! After she and Jacob became engaged in April 2009 she asked if I would make that dress for her. When Anna was very little, probably about two, Randy bought me a new Pfaff fancy sewing machine and a serger. I used to make her everything from pajamas to Pendleton Wool Swing Coats and all with her private label, “Anna Marie Exclusives” Of course I was thrilled, humbled, and extremely excited that she had asked and trusted me with such an important job, to make her wedding dress! I said yes to the dress! Ha! Ha! Yea, another “Anna Marie Exclusive”. I haven’t made one of those in a very long time.

So began my quest to “figure this out”. When Anna was in high school she was heavily involved in the theater department – acting. One thing I never expected was to be involved with her, but when she got her first part in a play in eighth grade, I went down to the director’s office and told her I could sew if they needed any help. I returned home with a bolt of upholstery fabric, a pattern and a feeling of excitement and apprehension to make this “Gone with the Wind” style dress. I had an absolute terrific time. I was given free reign to embellish it as I saw fit and it was a blast. This was the beginning of five years of creating many dresses for the school plays. We made dresses that truthfully looked like they were from a Broadway stage! This is where I got my experience fitting clothes to other people, and taking a picture and figuring out how to create the dress. I have sewn for years for myself, but never liked fitting clothes to other people. Over those five years I recreated first ladies inaugural gowns, beautiful silk beaded ball gowns, redesigned existing gowns from the costume closet, figuring out how to cover Mrs. Potts teapot arm from Beauty and the Beast and the list goes on and on. Anyway, I guess in all that, Anna watched me take pictures of dresses and see them come to life on my “lady” (my manikin). I think this is where she just figured that I could take this “picture” of the designer gown and make it come to life for her big day! Thus began about a month of praying, sketching, thinking, more praying, more thinking, more sketching, and more searching on the internet for ideas (we didn’t have a back view of the dress so we were going to have to make it up). I told her the dress would probably take me about a month of prayer and thinking to figure it out, then probably a month of sewing to bring it to life. I refer to it as “bringing it to life” because whenever I would make one of the gowns for school, I would call Karen (the mom in charge of the costumes) and tell her that “I have just given birth to another creation!” And so it goes, Anna and I will once again give birth to another creation! What a responsibility, I could never do it without knowing that the Lord would be there guiding me along. You may ask, what are you talking about, I can tell you there have been many times that I was about to cut something out backwards, or sew something together wrong and the phone would ring, or something would happen that would make me rethink what I was about to do and it would miraculously work out correctly. So I have to give the credit to the Lord for giving me the talent to sew and keeping me humble enough to rely on Him for help. Without that, this would be a bit overwhelming for “The Mother of the Bride”!