Home Is Where The Heart Is: Our First Dance

Home Is Where The Heart Is: Family Pictures

Home is Where the Heart Is: We all get dressed

By the time we arrived back to the house after our hair was done we were running about an hour behind. It was time to get into my beautiful Dolly Couture Dress!

Dolly Dress: The final conclusion

After getting a fews commenst about wanting to know how everything turned out, I have decided to write out my story with Dolly Couture and my "custom" dress.

After my last post with the 2nd seamstress I hoped that I would show up and magically find all the flaws worked out of my dress. I did not :( I put on my dress and mom zipped it up. My arms easily fit in the arm holes thanks to the magic of the seamstress. Unfortunately, the shoulders still felt like they were falling down most of the time. The bust was sewn/tacked together but it is still SO low cut. I am afraid to move around the kids because I think someone is gonna get a full view of the girls.

Mom and I tried to pull the bust together, but it wouldn't move anymore. I have room to take the waist in also, but the zipper won't be able to move if we take it in. I did not feel thinner or pretty or beautiful in my dress. I felt like I had no waist and a big butt in my dress.

I wrote Dolly one more time. After sending some more pictures and expressing my frustrations, I got an email back from her. She offered to have a new dress made for me. At first I didn't think it would work. There would be NO time for alterations, because at the time of the email I only had about 25 days till the wedding! She asked for ALL of my measurements, and I stopped at the seamstress and had them taken professionally so there was NO mix up at all. I had told Dolly in one of my last emails that I had expected my dress to look like the Beverlywood dress because that design had been based on the sketch she had made for me. Instead of recreating my first dress again (which obviously had fatal flaws IMO) she offered to have the Beverlywood dress made for me to my exact measurements. The only custom alteration would be to add my blue netting under the dress.

To say I was worried was an understatement. I was a ball of nerves until that new dress arrived. In my paniced state I even ordered a dress from David's Bridal in hopes that I would have SOMETHING to wear.

The new dress arrived on Septemeber 5th. Exactly 1 week before the wedding. I rushed to my mom's where the box had been delivered and opened the box. I pulled out the pink packing tissue and grabbed the hanger with the garment bag. I think I ran to the bed room and opened up the bag to get my first peak at the dress. It looked beautiful on the hanger. I carefully put the dress on and then called my kids in to help with the zipper. It went up perfectly and fit like a glove. I fell in love the INSTANT I saw my reflection.

This had been the moment I was waiting for. I had found my dress ... I had found my Bridal Glow. It was time to begin the countdown of my last week as a single/divorced mom with 2 kids. Join me on my journey thru the last week. It was a whirlwind!

Dolly Dress: Alterations (take 2)

Yesterday after work Mom & I headed to a second seamstress. The first seamstress that I went to is gone on vacation till the end of the month. I felt uneasy about waiting that long. The plus side to the new seamstress is that she is at a Bridal Shop, not her home and she is only a few blocks away from the shop. That makes it very easy to head over for fittings.

When I walked out of the dressing room to have my mom zip the back she said "You've lost weight" YIPPY!!! Those are very sweet words to hear, believe me :) I had brought a necklace to try with my dress as well (it was on loan) Mom and I both agreed it was a little too thick and didn't compliment my dress.

The seamstress came over and we showed her the problem areas of the bust. She made a few marks with her pins and that was that. For the changes she quoted us $40-$45! Not bad at all. I go back on August 10th. I am actually hoping that by then she will need to take the waist in. I just have to keep getting up in the morning for those walks.

I am still a little disappointed that the bodice wasn't made how I requested :( I did not ask for a boatneck. I asked for a tank. There is no way to make the dress into the original style that I requested and paid for :(

Are you disappointed with any aspect of your dress?

Dolly Dress: My Dress is BACK!!!

Let's see, where did I last leave off??? Oh! Yes. My dress was WRONG and I had to send it back :( I admit that I stalled when it came to sending back my dress. I just didn't want to put it back in the box and ship it off. My mom told me to basically suck it up and get it in the box already. So I did.

They redid the petticoat on my dress in lightening fast time. From the moment I sent off my dress to getting it back was about a week. No Joke! The blue petticoat is now the proper shade of blue and the petticoat reaches the hem of the dress (it didn't before). I am still not totally happy with the design of the petticoat. I think the fullness is hitting me in the worst/heaviest part of my body ... right around my hips. I did get the extra blue netting with my dress when I got it back so I may be able to have the seamstress fix that portion to help slim my hips a bit.

There will be more to this dress saga LOL. Stay tuned for the next alteration appointment, where I will be getting a second opinion.

What part of your wedding has become more time consuming than you anticipated?

Spotlight on Mom

Since today is Mother's Day I figured it was as good a time as any to tell you a little about my momma, and show off the adorable dress that she found last month to wear for the wedding.

I am the only girl in my family and I am the oldest. On top of that I was also the first grandchild on my father's side, as well as the first girl for my grandma. My grandma had 3 rough and tumble boys so when I came a long it was blessings all around. My mom went on to have 2 more boys (well they are twins) so she and I had to be the "strong woman force" together.

1979, 6 months old at the Redwoods

Our relationship has had many crash & burns over the years.

1983 Tahoe Trip

In the end she has always been there for me. Now that I am a mom myself I appreciate her even more.

Little A's baby shower 2001 - with both of my grandmothers before they passed away.

At my first wedding my mom did a LOT of the planning and DIY details. She tied the 150 bows for the invitations, glued 300+ seashells onto little mini frames. She even created the centerpieces. She has such a special talent for those type of projects. I have been trying to follow in her lead and since I am in town with her I am sure lots of my DIY projects will be Mom & Me projects instead.

When it came to finding a MOB dress for my mom none of the traditional options really fit with our wedding style. The long formal dresses with jackets are very nice, and she has worn those type of dresses to the 3 previous weddings (my 1st and each of my brothers). That formality just didn't fit in with our backyard/at home venue. It also would have been odd for her dress to be longer than mine, and since mine is tea length she wanted to find one similar.

She found a few options online at jcrew and David's Bridal in the bridesmaid sections. None seemed perfect though. She wanted to try them a few on before purchasing anything. Last month my dad had a business meeting up in Phoenix so Mom took that opportunity to go look for a dress at the Malls over there.

She was very disappointed at the first Mall that she went too. It was a very upscale Mall and she felt very out of place. She found a dress she liked at the Mac's there but they were sold out of her size and the sales lady didn't even offer to look up online :( She walked into a Chico's as well and was completely ignored, so she walked back out of there. While on the phone with me, sounding very discouraged she walked by an Ann Taylor and saw a dress in the window. She started describing it to me and I started looking on the website for it. I told her I liked it, so she braved the store and went to the rack to look for her size. No luck! They didn't have her size.

Not to be disscouraged I looked on the website to see if the Ann Taylor in town had her size. It wasn't in town, but there was a store at the Mall a few miles away from where my mom was in the Phoenix area. She hung up the phone with me and headed that way.

Her experience at the next store was VERY pleasant. The sales lady was very helpful, and helped zip up the dress and then complimented her on how great the dress looked on her. As did a few of the other customers in the dressing room. I wish I had been able to be there with her to take a picture. Since I wasn't, I will just show you which dress from Ann Taylor she picked


It has multiple different shades of blue, so it will easily tie in with Mr. B's shirt & shoes and the petticoat on my dress. It will also be VERY comfortable for her with the sleeveless design and the fact that it is cotton. Since there isn't a bridal party we don't have to worry about the pattern being too busy with other dresses. As a bonus she will also be able to wear it after the wedding, which she wasn't able to do with any of her other MOB dresses.

Did your mom find her dress in an unlikely place?

Dolly Dress: I just wanted to cry - Part 2

When we last left off I had just taken off my beautiful Dolly Couture dress and was on the brink of tears.

That evening I composed an email to all three of the contacts at Dolly Couture: Dolly herself, Nickie the sales rep, and Desiree the seamstress. I tried to be calm and rationale in my email. I think I did a good job of not turning Bridezilla on the staff.

In turn the responses from all three were very apologetic and informative. The seamstress actually admitted to changing the design of the petticoat after our last email conversation. Instead of using the softer pre-dyed netting, she used the regular tulle and dyed it with RIT dye - which is why the color was drastically different.
To compare here is the sample dress with the correct blue and my dress side by side:


As you can see there is a definite color difference. In person the blue is much darker than it photographs. It is because she used this stiffer tulle that the skirt is much fuller than I wanted as well. During the course of our emails back and forth it was decided that I would send the dress back and Desiree would remove the petticoat and resew a new one in with the correct netting.

The fit of the bodice was also an issue and Dolly suggested I go see a seamstress and was confident that with proper alteration the dress would fit. Yesterday my mom and I did just that.

This is the dress on me before the seamstress started pinning and making adjustments:


Problem #1 - The Arm Holes
They were cut WAY too small. As you can see the fabric under my arm buckles and folds over. They are also very constrictive and I can't raise my arms at all. The seamstress recommends about an inch be taken out from under the arm and then I will still need to take the tops of the straps in about an inch on the top so that the straps sit correctly on my shoulders like a tank top strap would.


Problem #2 - The Cross Over Bust
When not pinned the cross over portion of the bust gaps open and exposes the girls A LOT! I know I will be bending down thru out the wedding day so that needs to be fixed. Once the shoulders fit properly the bodice can be fixed so it sits correctly. It is VERY low cut right now.




Problem #3 - The Butt
Where the zipper ends on my dress there is a very definite "dimple" I am not sure that it is caused by the extra tulle or if it is a defect in the construction of the gown. Desiree will be taking a look at this when she has the dress to fix the petticoat.


I have been told by Dolly that these bodice alterations are my responsibility, but I am disappointed that I was not informed prior to placing my order that I needed to give them additional custom measurements. As stated in the FAQ on their site each custom measurement is a $25 upcharge. I had to give custom bust and waist measurements at the cost of an additional $75 because I am a plus size girl and the largest size on her size chart is an 18. I was not told that the neck to waist, shoulder to shoulder and arm circumference were needed measurements for this style to fit me correctly.

Stay tuned to see the outcoming of all these alterations. I know I am on pins and needles.

Did you have to have major alterations done to your dress?

Dolly Dress: I just wanted to cry - Part 1

I was SO excited to find out that my dress would be in my hot little hands this week!

On Wednesday afternoon after work I found the orange slip in my mailbox that I had missed the mailman by 20 min :( The post office now had my dress.

Thursday morning at work the little orange slip in my purse taunted me. I couldn't leave early though and I was really dreading the lunch hour crowd at our local post office. I decided to brave the trip anyway and at about 1pm I had the box in my car


There was really no way that I was gonna be able to wait to open the box at my mom's house, so I carefully tore into it and lifted out the garment bag that contained my dress.


Then I slowly unzipped the garment bag. I could see the beautiful champagne silk peeking out. I carefully reached in and gathered up the bottom of the dress and pulled it out of the garment bag.


The criss cross bodice looked just like I imagined.



The silk had the perfect about of sheen and warmth. Then I lifted the skirt to admire the custom royal blue petticoat.



Hmmmm .... that petticoat doesn't feel right. It felt stiff and not at all like the soft netting that was described to me. The color looked very dark as well. Not the vibrant royal blue that I saw in the original photo I used as my guide for picking the color.

I didn't start panicking. I thought it would be okay once I put the dress on at my mom's house. I carefully tucked the dress back into the garment bag and zipped it up.

Once at my mom's house I tore into the dress a little faster since I knew I was going to be putting it on. I had to walk out to have my mom zip up the back and thought it was odd that the skirt didn't fit thru the doorway. I understand I am a big girl, but that just didn't seem right.

I stepped into the living room and was less than pleased with the first words out of my mom's mouth. I may or may not have snapped at her (sorry mom). The moment just wasn't what I had thought it would be. The dress seemed really poofy, my mom didn't have the "oh you are so beautiful" look on her face, the straps on the shoulders didn't feel right and the neckline seemed very low. It just wasn't "perfect"

Mom started messing with the tulle to see if it was just bunched up too much and she tried to smooth it out. It helped a little with the poof, but not much. That is really when I started to realize the petticoat was wrong. Instead of 3 layers of soft netting and one top layer of stiff tulle the dress had 4 layers of stiff tulle. It was basically a DOUBLE full petticoat! Mom and I also agreed that the blue seemed a little "off". My daughter actually called it purple! Yikes!

Finally I just took the dress off and hung it back up. I was let down. I was disappointed. I was on the brink of tears.

Later that evening I went over ALL of my emails between Dolly, the Sales Rep and the Petticoat designer. I looked at the sample photos I had sent and decided to email all three. Stay tuned to find out their responses.

Were you disappointed with your dress when it finally arrived?

What a Week!

This week has thrown me into a whirlwind. Some wedding related, some kid related, some family related. Let's start with the BEST news ....

My Dress is on the way to ME! I am tracking her and she is currently in Colorado. I think I decided on a name, but I want to wait to put her on before I officially give her a name. I am sure she will speak to me!

In kid related new my son has Fifth Disease. We think the first signs started before we went to the Nascar Race. He had a track and field day at school, so we thought it was just an allergic grass rash. I gave him some meds and we headed off to the races. Well this weekend while I was getting ready to leave the bridal shower (more on that in the next post) my mom called to tell me the rash was back. I didn't go away so I took him today to get an official diagnosis. Fifth disease is not contagious once the rash appears and shouldn't cause any discomfort. It can last up to 3 weeks though. Keep my Little A in your thoughts and prayers.

As I just mentioned I attended a Bridal Shower this weekend for a really close friend. She is getting married in May and is having a black and white wedding. I can't wait to see it! We have been talking wedding for quite a while now. Our weddings have a lot of similarities. She is marring a man that already has a daughter. She opted to have her younger (much younger) neices as her wedding party. We attend the same church and we are using a few of the same vendors. They are also doing a DIY dinner and has offered to share her chaffing dishes and serving bowls with us. We are also using the same lady for our decorating, set up and clean-up.

On the home front I found out on Friday that my landlords are re-financing the house, so it will need to be appraised sometime this week. Sounds like the perfect time for a Spring Cleaning to me! Mr B and I have been busily cleaning my house, and shampooing the carpets in preparation. While we were at it we rearranged my living room and my bedroom. I will post the before and after's because it is a HUGE difference.

Stay tuned for the next post .... the Black & White Bridal Shower!!!

Dolly Dress: She needs a name

I am facebook friends with the designer making my custom wedding dress, Dolly Couture. Every few days or so she posts new pictures of the custom dresses she is working on. Today when I was checking my facebook account I saw that she had uploaded a new photo. That is when I saw her ...

My Dress!


She isn't done yet. The dotted petticoat is not what will be under mine. Plus my petticoat will not protrude from under my dress like this one does. I love her already. Now she needs a name. Something fun & flirty, and classically 50's. I found a few options of popular 1950's names. Which one do you like?

Bonnie
Marilyn
Peggy
Shirley
Carolyn
Beverly

Did you name your dress??

Dress Shopping

I know, I know ... I already posted that I bought my dress. I realize this, but I started getting a little nervous. You see ... I bought my dress sight unseen. Without trying it on! Without physically seeing or touching a dress made by this person. People thought I was CRAZY! Then I started to think I was crazy ... Then I started to get worried.

What does a worried bride do?? She calls the closest David's Bridal and makes an appointment. Why?? In hopes that she can try on dresses that will at least LOOK like the dress she has purchased sight unseen to calm her fears. So that is what I did. I felt a little bad going since I had no intention of buying a dress there. Then I remembered all the David's Bridal posts from previous bloggers. They are not a small little boutique that closes down for each bride. They have MASS amounts of dress in a wide array of sizes. As another blogger posted, they are the Wal-Mart of Bridal Salons. Do you feel bad walking out of Wal-Mart empty handed? Nope, me neither. I pushed those concerns aside and scheduled my appointment for the next time I would be taking my kids over to see their dad.

So last Friday after I dropped my kids off with their dad, I headed to David's Bridal in La Mesa in hopes of trying on at least ONE of these dresses:

Oleg Cassini


David's Bridal Collection


David's Bridal Collection


David's Bridal Collection

and my favorite:

Galina

You may have noticed a common theme among the dresses, until you reached my favorite. Let me explain. The top 4 dresses are all v-necks and have tank style sleeves. That is the bodice of the dress I ordered. I wanted to make sure that the girls would stay in place (if you know what I mean). The rest of the details on those dresses are basically worthless too me. I tried to explain that to the bridal consultant, but I don't think she really understood.

That brings me to my favorite dress ... the Galina! If David's Bridal made the Galina tea length dress with a tank style v-neck bodice I would have bought it. I knew I wanted a short dress since I saw Mrs. Shortcake's post on WeddingBee. (I wasn't browsing WeddingBee back then, I came across it while I was reading back in her posts LOL) What is very disappointing is that David's Bridal only stocks select gowns in the larger sizes. The biggest size they had of the Galina in stock was a size 14 .... yeah, not gonna work for this plus size girl.

The first dress I tried on was the ONLY dress in my size from my original list. GRRR.

David's Bridal Collection

You will have to excuse the photo quality. It is hard to be the one behind the camera if you are trying on dresses so a friend took these. I edited them the best I could, and cropped out my head to reduce the double chins and weird expressions I had.

I did actually love the neckline. The v-neck wasn't too low and didn't expose the girls too much as all. I wasn't crazy about how tight it was under the bust, even though it did give me a very defined waist. Hopefully that won't be a problem in my actual gown.

Since this was the first wedding dress I have tried on since I got married the first time it was VERY odd. Especially once the lady put a veil on me. I started to have mini flashbacks and almost wanted to be done with the appointment then and there. I stuck it out and picked the next dress to try on.

It was not one I had originally seen online, but it was in the store in my size, so I tried it on.


Style 9T9717


The modest panels may work for some, but not for me. I quickly unsnapped them to see the true line of the v-neck.

This one was cut higher and I defintely decided that I liked the 1st one better. I really didn't like the ruching on the side of the dress. It didn't hide my belly at all, in fact I felt like it emphasised it. Not a good thing at all.


I then tried on a halter style sheath dress

This fabric clung to all the wrong parts. I would have to be knee to bra in restrictive undergarments if I wore this style. No Thanks.

Next was actually a strapless dress ... that I hated. I hated it so much I wouldn't allow my friend to take a picture.

I think it was about then that the consultant's manger came over to check on us. I have seen enough "Say Yes To The Dress" to know that she was trying to save a possible sale. My biggest objection to every dress was that they were not tea length. The one tea length dress they had in the store wasn't my size. They brought it over and I held it up while wearing a bridesmaid outfit to "feel the style"


See that cheesy smile? Yeah, I knew at that point that I was gonna love my Dolly Couture dress. Only about a month and a half until my dress should arrive. I can barely wait to try it on for the first time and have that cheesy smile yet again for the real thing!

Did you buy your wedding dress sight unseen?