We ripped apart my dress Part 2

I am sorry it has taken me so long to publish part two but there were (what felt like) a million photos to comb through. If you haven’t read part one that will be helpful in explaining the how and why behind splitting my dress. Click here to read part one.

I was a little worried walking into the first fitting. I am a size 2-4 but my brace hips width makes me a size 10-12- I know if they hadn’t measured it, I wouldn’t have believed it either! So we got a larger sized dress which meant there were even more alterations needed despite the clear and daunting alterations that were being done. I was worried I would be sad seeing my wedding dress in three pieces but it was not as bad as I thought. It was actually quite cool.

Now onto the hard part- starting alterations. We started by making the size 12 bodice into a much smaller size. Then we moved on to marking and hemming the petticoat underneath with the brace on (I will say that with all the pins in the bodice putting the brace over it to get more measurements was not simple- I was a living breathing cactus.)

My seamstress was so smart and decided to take out the top layers length instead of trying to re-hem the entire petticoat. Next we moved onto the the gorgeous skirt of the dress. There were probably 1,000 pins involved at this point.

I was so grateful to have my grandmother, mother, and best friend with me for my first dress fitting. It was long but I couldn’t wait for my next appointment!

A few weeks later and the dress started to resemble a dress! Thankfully my seamstress waited to completely sew down the bodice because in March I was hospitalized and couldn’t eat for three weeks and lost almost 15 lbs. This week besides resizing the bodice, my seamstress added all these hoops and buckle to anchor my skirt to the brace to ensure that it wouldn’t fall off.

I was so fatigued and at times still smiling but there were a few times I might have shed some tears in the fitting room. In this fitting we also decided to take off the train to help make it lighter for me to move in.