Making Wedding Dress Pt.1 – Fabric Shopping

As I mentioned before, I’m making a wedding dress for my friend who is getting married in early September. I was really flattered when she asked me to make her a wedding dress. It is actually going to be a wedding dress for her after party. You see, Japanese weddings are a bit different from the ones in the U.S. Here, most hotels have a fake chapel for the purpose of wedding.  They offer fake priests who give fake sermons (in fact, my husband was recruited to be a fake priest just because he is White..to which he said No). You are supposed to rent, not buy a wedding dress from a boutique that’s associated with the hotel, and it’s insanely expensive! Costs start anywhere from 300,000 yen (over 3,000 USD) to rent it. If you are bringing in your own wedding dress, they charge you about $500 for a “bring in fee”. Some hotels won’t allow you to bring in your own dress at all forcing you to rent from them. Back to my friend’s case, she is renting her wedding dress which can be used for the ceremony and reception, but in order for her to take the same wedding dress to the after party, the hotel would charge her an insanely expensive additional fee. So, instead of wasting money on a rental fee she decided to have a custom dress made by yours truly!!! Now, she can wear something different at the after party from what she will wear at the ceremony. Plus…no ridiculous hotel ripoff fees.

Anyway, all that to say that It will be fun to document the dress making process on my blog! As a part 1 of the series, I wanted to show you what we bought during our trip to the Nippori fabric district last week. There you have everything you need. A store called Tomato is very famous because of its reasonable prices. Another store, one that people might not know about is Miki.  I go to Miki whenever I need some higher end dressy fabrics. They have a great selection of dress fabrics and linings.

For muslin:
– 5m of sheeting fabric, 160yen/meter, 800yen
– 1 invisible zipper, 180yen

For dress:
– 3 ivory color surger thread, 360 yen
– 1 ivory color sewing thread, 200yen
– 1 invisible zipper, 180yen
– 2 meters of bone, 340yen
– 12 bone caps, 25yen/1 cap, 300yen
– 1 set of bra pad, 680 yen
– iron on interface, 360yen
– 1m ribbon for shoulder straps, 132yen
– 6m dress fabric (polyester matte satin), 780yen/meter, 4680yen
– 3m organza fabric for bow in the back, 390yen/meter, 1170yen
– 6m cupra lining fabric, 300yen/meter, 1800yen
– dress cover, 1050yen

Everything included, it was about 12,000yen, approximately 140 USD! I’m making a muslin for her now, and will update the process soon:)

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. I updated the shop with two new dresses today: this and this 🙂

P.P.S. Orient watch giveaway is still open! Enter it here!