bridal

Making Wedding Dress Pt.1 – Fabric Shopping

July 15, 2011 By Chie

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!

New “Weddings” Section on Website!

June 20, 2011 By Chie

Hello! How was the weekend? Things are good on this end. Very productive all around, I think. Kiko is on a regular schedule and goes to bed without too many tears. Andy still cries a little bit before bed time but even he is getting used to his schedule:p The more exciting news is the launch of wedding section (as you can see from the screen shot above). Here I will be showcasing bridesmaid dresses and very soon will be able to feature my very first custom made wedding dress. As for the bridesmaid dresses, I have done a fair number of those, and I was thrilled to receive recently a photo-testimonial from a customer who had her wedding in the U.S. last year. She sent me some great photos and a glowing review… I wish I had been there at the wedding!

The first of my “Here Comes the Bride” white wedding dresses is underway as we speak. My high school friend contacted me a a few months ago about putting her wedding dress together. I was nervous because it will be my first wedding dress. Not only that, the customer is my good friend… What if she doesn’t like it? What if I screw it up? What if questions ran through my mind before I said yes but eventually I decided to take the plunge. It has been a fun and challenging. I was not expecting to be in the position of leading her through what she wants created. I have never led someone through this kind of decision making process before… She had some styles which she was considering, but was not sure what would best suit her body type and personality. After we decided on general style direction, we did four fittings to make a pattern that perfectly fits her. Her dress will include details like sweet heart neckline, wide waistband and long, half circle skirt.

The next hurdle to overcome is the fabric selection. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we can go together on a fabric hunt and pick out her fabric of choice. There are soo many fabric choices for wedding dress! Silk, satin, lace, organza, white, ivory..we had been to fabric shopping together but came back empty handed, since there were so many choices. When those of you who are married got married, how did you go about the dress selection? Did you consider going completely custom? What would be your main concerns if you were having a wedding dress custom made? Those of you who are unmarried but thinking about it, any thoughts on how you would create a perfect customized wedding dress? I really want this dress to be perfect for her but the bride has so many things to worry about that I think sometimes her thoughts get muddles. I want to be as helpful as possible without being overbearing…what do you think?

Lemon yellow bride’s maid dresses

May 24, 2010 By Chie

This was what I was working on last week. 5 bride’s maid dresses! It feels like I’ve accomplished something, and I feel pretty good about it. Actually, it wasn’t all that hard once I got on it, I made a mini production line – I cut all the fabric at the same time, iron at the same time and surged at the same time and finished them:)
I have made bride’s maid dress before, but this was the first time I made five. I feel so honored to have asked to do such an important task as to make bridal parties dresses!

Sorry for my messy hair… I didn’t realize it until I saw the photos on Photoshop. It was raining all day long here, plus, I had such a long day today running around to get my work done.