Q – How many wedding dresses have you made?
A – I’ve probably made around 15 wedding dresses over the years.
Q – What would you say has been the biggest problem you’ve ever had?
A – Brides to be always have their weight fluctuating, and that’s no fun. Most of the time they actually gain weight when they say they’re working on losing weight. You’d think stress would make them lose weight, but it doesn’t usually go that direction.
Q – Do you design dresses, or do you use a pattern?
A – The only wedding dress I ever designed was my own dress. I usually work with the brides on the pattern they want for their dress. They always purchase the fabric, or give me the money to purchase the fabric. I try to get them the best deal possible, even hopping onto a bus or train to New York sometimes to find them lower cost fabrics.
Q – What’s the longest it’s taken you to put together a wedding dress?
A – It once took me two weeks to make a wedding dress. It wasn’t the dress so much as all of the hand stitching on the back of the bodice. The lace overlay on the silhouette was fairly easy, and I was thankful for that because of how long the back took. I actually had two 14-hour days just working on the back of the dress. The rest of the pattern came easily, even the hand stitching along the sides of the dress, which had this really pretty pattern, went easier than the back.
Q – How does the conversation go when someone asks you to make a wedding dress for them?
A – Brides always want to start off with price, and I always tell them that I can’t start with price before I know what it is they want. Since they buy all the materials, the only thing they have to pay me for is my time. And I don’t know what my time will be until we agree on the pattern and the materials. Some materials are hard to work with, some are easy. That dress I talked about above took a lot of time, so I charged her more.
Q – Do you only deal with making wedding dresses?
A – No, the bulk of the work I do is in alterations. That’s so much easier to deal with most of the time, unless a bride has purchased a wedding dress that’s way too small for her. If there’s not enough material to cover it, then it’s almost like making a new dress, because I then have to go out and find material that matches the dress, and then add it so that the pattern of the dress doesn’t look like it’s changed. And I have to make sure I buy enough of it because, as I said, more brides gain weight than lose it leading up to the wedding.
Q – Final question; what kind of satisfaction do you get once a dress is totally done?
A – I love seeing a completed project. When you see something in a pattern, it doesn’t quite do the finished dress enough justice. And when you see a wedding dress looking perfect on the bride, there’s not enough words to describe the pride you feel in having a part in making it. I will say, though, that once I complete a dress, I don’t want to make another one for awhile. Sometimes the entire process can take months because of the constant alterations, and you can get caught up in the bride’s emotions. So I usually need a little bit of time to decompress from that experience.
