What To Wear

Welcome to the EAD Weddings blog! We are so excited to have you here. If you are a new visitor, we'd love for you to subscribe to our RSS feed and visit our sister site, EAD Living. Thanks for visiting and we hope you come back soon!

Many of my friends got married the same summer I did. It was fun to compare notes during the wedding planning process. During one conversation, a dear friend said, “Yeah, our wedding isn’t too expensive either. Aside from the food at the reception, everything is pretty reasonable.”

I reminded her, “Aren’t you having your dress custom designed? How expensive is that?”

“Oh, that. I forgot. The dress costs about $2,000.”

That was our entire budget!

I could spend $2,000 on my dress, as long as we didn’t need food, alcohol, cake, flowers, decorations, invitations, etc.

Needless to say, I decided not to spend our entire budget on my dress.

I wanted something comfortable. I wanted to be able to dance and walk around and hug without limitation. I didn’t want to have to change into a more comfortable dress for the reception. I also didn’t want something that was dragging on the ground.

And there it was. On Target clearance. A perfectly suitable white sundress for a mere $15.

I say “perfectly suitable” rather than “perfect” because it had its flaws. Number One: there was so much extra fabric it made my waist look bigger than it is. Number Two: it was a little plain.

I decided to remedy both these problems with a little DIY, handmade action.

I fixed the first problem by creating a simple sash. Because I was trying to be friendly to the environment and my budget, I simply used fabric from an old piece of clothing. The clothing had significance to me because I purchased it while traveling through India right after I met Matt. I used some thick interfacing to prevent any crinkling, and I sewed on some buttons.

In terms of the second problem, I decided to do some customized embroidery along the bottom. First, Matt and I designed the story of our life together. Since our first date involved a frolic in the sprinklers, for example, we depicted two birds splashing around in a bird bath.

In order to save even more money, I used the same fabric to fashion a tie for Matt. Even though I had never undertaken such a feat before, I knew I could turn to the internet for help. After a Google search and an online tutorial, the tie was complete. Voila!

For the final touch, I used the fabric to make flower pins for our wedding party (thanks to another internet tutorial!) and a matching bandanna for our dog, Hoss.

As fun as it was to spend time hand-making items for our wedding, I had to pull myself away to focus on more significant undertakings: writing our own ceremony.