The Tale of A Wedding: Clothing The Men

I like to think I am fully responsible for all that hotness, but lets face it...there's some good looking dudes right there...

I started with the simplest bit first. The Ties. I found the perfect for skinny tie pattern on Pinterest. Which can be found here. I used the pattern exactly as posted. But I completely scraped the instructions. Mainly because I didn't want to fully line the ties and the steps of construction just seemed plainly slow and impractical...I just lined the tips up about 2 inches, sewed it into a tube, and turned it. The only issue I had with this was the ties wanting to twist up a bit and not lay smooth and flat.
In hind sight...go with the original instructions. You'll end up with a more professional looking tie. 

For the vest we finally choose Vogue 7488, view A. We left off the upper welts and the bottom ones are actually faux. (This girl is not a fan of the things and seeing as they will likely not be worn again I didn't feel they were necessary.)

We found the vest material at Joann's. Its a Charcoal dapple suiting by Sew Classics. Got the buckles and buttons forms there as well (yay coupons). (Note to self - they don't have 1" buckles like the pattern calls for, but the 3/4" one works perfectly!)

I found it interesting to compare the construct and shape of these modern vests to the mid-nineteenth century ones I do.

The only real issue we had was with the blasted covered buttons popping apart the morning of, when the guys were getting ready...I had made several extras, but I wasn't on site when it was going on to be able to fix them so that was super stressful (^thus me arriving and kicking in to quasi freak mode. lol).

As you can probably observe the only alteration I had to make to the pattern was in a few cases adding length....Tall men...All of my guys were long distance, but one so that added a dose of fun for sure.

I was happy my work even with stood some playful, rough housing! ;)

I had all the pieces, but the grooms vest ,done about 2 weeks before the wedding. There was some complications with who was going to make the grooms vest and I ended up finishing the last half the *night before* the wedding around 11:30. Thank goodness for a helpful sister in law that could sew the buttons on while I ran off to write my maid of honor speech. I was saying never again at the time... lol I don't know when, if ever I've felt that stressed out. Definitely not a wise move waiting that last minute.

And there you have it!
All the wedding sewing completed. Next step seeing how it all came together...

What do y'all think of the more casual look for groomsmen? Is this something you would choose?

Love,
Brooke 

The Tale of A Wedding: Clothing The Ladies

Just a few short weeks after my sister got engaged back in April...we started planning the wedding wardrobes.. its took very little searching to find we weren't going to locate anything ready-made that would be suitable. Thus the quest for a pattern began. Michelle quickly decided on Retro Butterick 5603 - we thought it was a cute and flattering choice for all the different body types involved.

Fabric is always the tough part. We ordered several swatches. Some from Fabric.com and more from  OnlineFabricStore. We ended up choosing Plum Taffeta from OFS. Despite having previously seen the swatch. We had a bit of color shock when the 18 yard roll came. It was much brighter then we'd expected. We took it outside and did some detailed examining and decided we'd go ahead and use it. 

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This dress definitely has some quirky bits.The neckband was by far the next most time consuming thing...they were constantly puckering and looking crappy. Can't have that now can we? All those hems were mighty fun too.   

However, by the time I got to the 5th dress - I had things down to a science... From start to finish each dress, on average took about 24 hours... I am not a fan of cutting out (okay I hate it) so that always slows me down a lot - but once its done everything is down hill from there.

Gunna take a moment to tell my future self that ^ is not something you want to be doing the morning of the wedding. Just trimming down seams for a smidge more room. But with all the last minute sewing I did - it just added unnecessary stress that I didn't need.

6 unique and beautiful ladies...and I personally think it looks pretty dang rad on all of us?! I had to make very few alterations. A couple length adjustments, alittle downsizing on one, and a bit of nipping in at the waist on mine (by far the hardest. My body shape drives me mad some days. I needed like a size 12 on the bust and a 6 at the waist...not fun at all. Thankfully lil sis is picking up pinning quite well).

That V in the back was such a bear to work with, but I do so love the way it looks. Totally my favorite part of the dress!

In conclusion I will just say its SO, beyond rewarding to look at those pictures and think I did that!! Yes, there were moments I didn't think I was going to make it thru and moments when I just plain wanted to be done, but in the end it was all worth it! I've created lots of memories along the way - it even impelled me find new music which, in turn, became favorites and will forever have special meaning because of it. I mean com'on who doesn't love that?!

So thoughts? What do you think of the style, color, etc?

Love,

Brooke

*All photos credit - Jessica McDonald http://romantiquephotography.wordpress.com/