Baby girl got married

Although weddings of one's children are - understandably - rare highlights of life, rest assured I wouldn't be blogging about this one if it wasn't sewing related.  In the event, it was not so much a wedding but a process - never have I been so intimately involved, for months and months and months, in someone else's big day, and, having only this one daughter, I never expect to be so again. In comparison with hers, even my own weddings - yes, more than one ;) - were small and simple  affairs both in planning and execution. And though the leadup to this one consumed months of activity, it was time well spent, a real mom-daughter treat. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

What I found most interesting is hearing right from the get go what the young couple didn't want:  overwhelming formality and conventionality.  She was adamant that as a modern woman she didn't want  to look like a cupcake.  So, emphatically, no white gown, no veil, and no passel of bridesmaids in matching cocktail dresses hanging on the arms of cookie-cutter groomsmen.  She wanted a country themed wedding, with a colourful floral skirt, a simple non-matching top, and flowers in her hair.

Finding fabric for the skirt was hilariously difficult, time consuming, and ultimately unsatisfying.  We hit our local Fabricland of course, and several times at that.  I then pointed her at the various online fabric stores, and kept sending her links to various floral prints in silk, cotton, poly.... Eventually she bought a length of floral fabric on e*bay, and then had to return it because the actual colour tone was not at all like its photograph: dingy beige background instead of a clean cream coloured one.  "I am beginning to understand why women choose white for their wedding", she sighed one day after this little fiasco, "it removes the stress of having to find something you'll actually like!" Um, yes, that's definitely one way to look at it.  And this from a child of mine who's nothing if not decisive.  

Ultimately, grandma came to the rescue with an offer of a heavy embroidered gold silk she'd purchased a very long time ago on a trip to India. Mom - that's me! - made the skirt, of course: fitted to the hip and flaring nicely below, very simple out of four identical panels, a waistband with elastic in the back to snug it up to the waist, invisible CB zipper, lined with cream bemberg with lace along the hem.  I offered to make her a matching shrug out of the remnant, but my little bride-to-be declined the offer.

We also had a couple of marathon weekends of hemming lots and lots of white tablecloths and gazillions of floral napkins:

On her own time, she made hundreds of yards of lace triangle bunting that  decorated the ceremony venue:

And then, I made myself a little silk dress. The silk, a green-tan paisley charmeuse-chiffon with metallic gold threads, came out of my stash.  The pattern was Burda magazine 12-2008-110 with a pleated front neckline, that I'd used once before.  This time, I adapted it slightly for this very lightweight fabric by widening the skirt hem by about 50 cm to make it flowy; in the original pattern, the skirt is a straight pencil one.  I also had enough fabric to make a very large matching headscarf that I wore in lieu of hair under a large, wide-brimmed hat.  I was going to line it - honest! then, just as I was about to cut into the lining fabric, got a whisper of a memory niggle that I might just have a full length slip that might do instead.  Righty-oh!  Indeed, I had made a white silk charmeuse slip so long ago it was all but forgotten.  So, I wore that under the dress, and didn't have to line it at all. 

I don't have a full length shot - yet...

All in all, it was a beautiful, memorable weekend, and a great time was had by all.