Real bride - Milly

Lovely Milly found me well ahead of her wedding date because she’d fallen in love with some aspects of a dress she’d seen online - but she hated other parts of that same dress. She got in touch to ask, if she bought this dress she’d seen, how we could adapt it to remove the aspects she didn’t love. After a coffee and a chat we concluded why are we trying to take apart and re-construct an existing design when we could just make something from scratch to tick all of the boxes.

So I began fabric sourcing and sketching up ideas until we came to a final design that did just that, we wanted the helix lace design to fall throughout the dress with a nude under-layer to allow the bride to stand out next to her white bridesmaids dresses, stretch lace sleeves and an illusion low back that incorporated cascading sequin leaves.

Over the course of the year leading up to Milly wedding we had multiple fittings to build the design in real life and fit it to her body before the big day. We also created a super soft plain tulle veil to extend beyond the train of her dress to complete the look.

You don’t have to compromise when searching for your wedding dress, and it doesn’t have to break the bank either. The cost of the original design Milly saw would have been more than the dress I made for her and would have required hundreds of pounds worth of alterations. However, if you have a dress made bespoke it will be made to fit you, meaning no additional alterations costs are required, it really is a win win!!

Photography: Ben Fiore