The hunt began for an ivory mikado bridal fabric after Rachel brought me some inspiration pictures for the vision of her soon-to-be wedding dress. It was important for her to choose a small Chicago designer to create it for her. So here I am. Yey! Of course I don’t find just one fabric, I like to give options, so we began with three to keep things simple. Eventually, through the process of elimination, the beautiful 100% Italian silk mikado was on the way. I’m not sure which one of us was more excited.
The prototype for this gown was constructed in lightening speed. I do think it was the excitement that hastened the process a bit.
Should the dress have sleeves or not?
Initially it was going to be a detachable sleeve, and I thought long and hard about how we were going to do this. We must be very careful with a silk mikado because literally every little seam shows, so anything that’s not fully attached or is detachable may not look like it belongs. Or it may just look tacky and present a question mark of whether it was a last minute poorly executed contraption. So here’s what I came up with.
Annnddd… turns out the sleeves were legit enough, that we didn’t need to make them detachable afterall! This contraption/ invention totally would have worked though, so I may revisit it in another moment in time. At some point in the future.
Tiny buttons were placed along the entire length of the back of the dress
and guess what… those were made custom too! It wouldn’t be a custom fabric gown if the buttons did not match it, right?
The French bustle captured the spirit of this gown.
Mom’s veil completed the look.
Here’s a little peek at the inner corset structure of this custom wedding dress and some of the details