I have struggled with my weight from a really early age. Over the course of my life I have successfully lost a significant amount of weight several times only to gain it back. In 2013 I had climbed to my heaviest and vowed to make a change that would change my life, not just the shape of my body. I began a blog about my journey and over about two years I changed how I ate and began to make exercise an important part of my life. When we got engaged last June I was 50 pounds lighter.
I wouldn't have done this any other way. I knew that when I was preparing for my wedding I wanted to focus on the parts I wanted to remember and not on how to lose the most weight before the big day. For the most part I have been successful in making that happen for myself. I still have about 15 pounds to lose before I hit my goal but summer is my best time for getting fit because the weather allows me to walk with Brutus which gets me most motivated to exercise. When the days are long we walk about 5 miles every day. It is so therapeutic and has added so much value to my life. It helps me focus on what is important.
That being said, when the days are short and I can't walk with Brutus after work, my progress falls off the map. I like to think I'm a morning person because I thought my life would include being the host of a morning radio show but since it has taken another turn I am finally admitting to myself that mornings are not all that attractive to me. The idea of them is but in practice it is so hard for me to pull myself out of bed super early to go exercise. One thing I learned about weight loss and maintenance is that you have to have an option that you actually like to do otherwise it is a chore and you're bound to fail. This winter has killed my momentum and now that the days are longer I am so excited to get back to walking.
I am starting this Spring at 170lbs... 5 pounds heavier than when I began this winter and that's not all that bad at all. By the time the wedding comes I anticipate that I will be at about 155, my original goal when I began my weight loss 3 years ago.
losing the 15pounds isn't really my goal though. I'm moving on from the number on the scale and paying attention to toning myself up. I don't care what I actually weigh on my wedding day but I do know that I want to make my arms stronger. I want to tone my stomach and build some muscle all over my body. Walking really helps me build that in my lower half so I plan to spend more time on my upper body to achieve similar results.
This wedding is about having fun and having a day with our family and friends that we remember for a lifetime. I am so excited about the photographer that will be documenting our day. He's incredible and I'll have a whole blog post all about him and his work but I am so looking forward to spending two hours with him, just Ben and me. We had a blast on our engagement shoot and I love the pictures so much. I spend so much time behind a camera that I almost never spend time in front of it but this will be the one day that I will be thrilled to be the subject and I really want to be fit. Partly this is vain because I want to look gorgeous but it is also about how I feel. I want to feel healthy and fit on my wedding day. I feel like my wedding day is the start of my new life as a new woman. I know it is symbolic and that the day after we are married we are still just the happy couple we are now but it feels like a big milestone and I want my fitness to be a part of that.
I feel like all my romantic teenage dreams are coming true and back then all I wanted was to be skinny and have the boys take notice. Today I have more than a boy, I have an amazing man who is everything I dreamed about. I don't just want to be skinny anymore, I want to be fit. I want fitness to be a part of who I am for every day of my life as a Luce. That is what is going to motivate me and make me feel like exercising isn't to make me skinny. It is to make me happy.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
149 Days to go
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
The Money
The second most common question I get when I tell people I'm making my own wedding dress is "Are you doing this just to save money?" While the money played a part in my decision, it was, by no means, the deciding factor. I had this idea way before I got engaged and knew that I wanted something unique and special. I do, however, understand the mindset of someone who is trying to cut costs and making the dress is an avenue to achieving that. I also believe, that if done right, you can have a dream dress that does not cost you an arm and a leg... I mean any hem is going to look a little awkward if you trade an arm AND a leg after you've picked the dress... Just sayin'...
What is expensive anyway? $60,000? $6,000? $600? When the object in question is a dress my direct answers to the previous 3 figures are ...."You're kidding right?", "Um.. Yeah....".. and "Uh huh!" Everyone has a differing opinion on what is reasonable to spend on a dress that result from a culmination of economic factors. For me, I am trying to make a game out of how little I can spend on the wedding and still make it a gorgeous event that will be immortalized in pictures for my life to come.
The dress that inspired my design was $600. For me, that was too much to justify spending on a dress I will wear once. It also wasn't exactly what I wanted. The beading on the dress I tried on has a triangle/diamond kind of pattern in the middle with a gawdy blingy fake gem thing that just isn't me. I could see me wanting to take that dress and make my own alterations to it but at $600 any mistake makes that option too costly. Instead, I knew that I could change that to be anything I wanted and then incorporate aspects of my mom's wedding dresses.
That being said, I know that $600 isn't actually a lot to spend for some people. I tried on other dresses at the shop that day that far exceeded that but there weren't any that were less than that. I'm sure the shop had dresses in many different price points but I didn't want cost to be the driving factor in my decision and end up with a dress that I didn't love or that didn't mean anything to me except to show off my frugal skills.
For me, making this dress is about so much more than money. It is about getting to spend time with women I love putting in a labor of love. It is about being able to take pride in the fact that it will be uniquely mine. No one else will ever have the same dress. It is about being able to personalize every aspect of this wedding down to the smallest detail. It is about spending a lot of time doing something for the wedding that feels intimate. It is about making memories of this year that I'll treasure. I'm only doing this once and I don't want the sense that I let it get me so frenzied that I forget to stop and enjoy it. In a way, this dress is about what it will be like to have a marriage. With every single sequined leaf I sew on, I'll be reminded that you have to be patient, put in a lot of work, and pay attention to details. a marriage shouldn't be about money and neither should the dress I wear to make it official. I know I'm weird by some standards but I'm not worried.
The current total on this dress is less than $250 which includes the material for the shell, lining, and overlay as well as the boning, interfacing, beading, zipper, and embellishment cording. I don't see the costs going much higher pending any major fiascoes. Instead, we have money in our budget for a live band, great food, and plenty of drinks.
I'm grateful I even have the opportunity to do this because it really is adding so much value to this whole year of wedding planning. Saving money is really just a bonus.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
159 days until the wedding
What is expensive anyway? $60,000? $6,000? $600? When the object in question is a dress my direct answers to the previous 3 figures are ...."You're kidding right?", "Um.. Yeah....".. and "Uh huh!" Everyone has a differing opinion on what is reasonable to spend on a dress that result from a culmination of economic factors. For me, I am trying to make a game out of how little I can spend on the wedding and still make it a gorgeous event that will be immortalized in pictures for my life to come.
The dress that inspired my design was $600. For me, that was too much to justify spending on a dress I will wear once. It also wasn't exactly what I wanted. The beading on the dress I tried on has a triangle/diamond kind of pattern in the middle with a gawdy blingy fake gem thing that just isn't me. I could see me wanting to take that dress and make my own alterations to it but at $600 any mistake makes that option too costly. Instead, I knew that I could change that to be anything I wanted and then incorporate aspects of my mom's wedding dresses.
That being said, I know that $600 isn't actually a lot to spend for some people. I tried on other dresses at the shop that day that far exceeded that but there weren't any that were less than that. I'm sure the shop had dresses in many different price points but I didn't want cost to be the driving factor in my decision and end up with a dress that I didn't love or that didn't mean anything to me except to show off my frugal skills.
For me, making this dress is about so much more than money. It is about getting to spend time with women I love putting in a labor of love. It is about being able to take pride in the fact that it will be uniquely mine. No one else will ever have the same dress. It is about being able to personalize every aspect of this wedding down to the smallest detail. It is about spending a lot of time doing something for the wedding that feels intimate. It is about making memories of this year that I'll treasure. I'm only doing this once and I don't want the sense that I let it get me so frenzied that I forget to stop and enjoy it. In a way, this dress is about what it will be like to have a marriage. With every single sequined leaf I sew on, I'll be reminded that you have to be patient, put in a lot of work, and pay attention to details. a marriage shouldn't be about money and neither should the dress I wear to make it official. I know I'm weird by some standards but I'm not worried.
The current total on this dress is less than $250 which includes the material for the shell, lining, and overlay as well as the boning, interfacing, beading, zipper, and embellishment cording. I don't see the costs going much higher pending any major fiascoes. Instead, we have money in our budget for a live band, great food, and plenty of drinks.
I'm grateful I even have the opportunity to do this because it really is adding so much value to this whole year of wedding planning. Saving money is really just a bonus.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
159 days until the wedding
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Phase 2- Sew You Think You Can Sew
I anticipated that this project was going to be a HUGE undertaking and I braced myself for a long process of hurrying up to wait. The real deal is that it absolutely IS a huge undertaking but breaking it into pieces has kept me fulfilled and I'm getting a heavy dose of gratification every time we get a step closer to it looking like an actual wedding dress.
I'm shocked at how seemingly quick and easy this is coming together. That is my cue to give another ginormous Thank You to Nancy for all she has done to make all of this seem like it is no sweat. I don't know if it is her experience or just her attitude for productivity but so far the phrase "easy peasy" keeps coming to mind. I'm not delusional though, I know that hard parts are on the horizon but so far I am so pleased with the progress.
I actually sewed my first stitch! Nancy did a LOT of work before I arrived and saved the "safe" pieces for me to do... you know.. because she's smart... I sewed all the pieces of the lining of the skirt with only a couple snaffoos...I sewed one seam inside out and then sewed a whole section of the lining into the rest of the lining because it got into my "sew path" without me knowing and because I was on such a roll (my new nickname is "Butter") I just blew right through and realized it about 20 stitches too late... had to tear it apart and then do it over again. A good helping of paying attention would have gone a long way to minimize these little problems. At the end of the session you could really see how well the dress we are making resembles the one I tried on at the bridal boutique.
This blog post has been a few weeks in the making because I've wanted to make sense of the pattern and the whole process so I could explain it in a way that anyone could read through it and be able to then go make a dress of their own. I am so grateful to Nancy because without her getting this far on my own would have been a lot more taxing. As she is teaching me I want to take that knowledge and put it in this blog so that it is easily (or at least relatively easily) replicated.
Here is what I have been able to decipher about bringing a dress pattern to life:
1. The Pattern is your Master
Before this, I had never even looked at a pattern to make clothing of any kind... (I know you're thinking "then why the hell would you want to make your own wedding dress?!" Because I'm a nutbag but mostly because Nancy was willing to be my guide. ) I wasn't sure how hard or easy it would be to figure out the instructions and what things the writers of the pattern took the liberty of assuming I knew when I actually knew nothing at all except for English... I'm pretty good at reading English...
Initially I wanted to scan in my whole pattern to show each step as I described it but then I remembered that McCall's probably has a better lawyer than I do and that is just not a wedding expense that I can really justify. Instead I'll include pictures of the pieces of the pattern that were fundamental in my understanding of how the pattern works.
~ Highlight your pattern: The pattern I am using can be used to make two different dresses. If you're in the same boat I highly recommend going through and highlighting or marking all the pieces of the pattern that are relevant to the dress you are making.
~Figure out the lingo: This might be really obvious but make sure you READ THE PATTERN before doing anything else. If you're new to this, like me, you won't understand it all the first run through but that's what the glossary and pictures are for.
For me I didn't know anything about cutting layouts, stitch names, symbols used to show cut/fold lines etc, or seam allowances. Reading through the pattern and getting comfortable with the things I didn't know was important. Here are the greatest tools when doing that:
a. Glossary
b. Sewing Information Fabric Key
c.Seam Allowance Key
d. Cutting Layout Key
e. Google (Whenever a technique or word was used that I wasn't sure what they meant but they obviously were assuming I would know what they meant, I Googled it like the modern maven I am.)
~ Gathering extra Materials: When I stressed above that you should read the pattern I need to come clean that I got away with not actually reading through my pattern carefully before writing this very post. Nancy did some of the biggest steps to get it to a point where I could start sewing. I know I've said this so many times but I am so lucky to have her. She has done so much to make this process so easy on me and I haven't had to feel like I'm going it alone at all.
When she read through the pattern though she mentioned that we needed to get some interfacing. I had no idea what she meant and she offered to find it because she knew what she was looking for. She explained that interfacing is the material used to provide shaping, reinforcement, firming and support. Generally interfacing is used for cuffs, collars, and things that need to maintain a shape but for our project, this was going to be the material that gave the top of the dress the sweet-heart look.
This wasn't on our initial list of things to obtain before getting started so we it made the "Extra Materials" list. We also added "boning" to this list of extra things we would need to proceed. I will also admit I giggled like a 12 year old boy at the thought of putting some boning into my dress... I'd make the inappropriate joke here about the dress leading to boning but... I guess the joke just made itself anyway....
Boning is not just a term for the naughty though, I learned after giggling... It is a lot like interfacing in principle as it is used to maintain shape and give support. The pattern I am using is for a strapless dress and in that kind of dress boning is used to provide the support needed to keep the top up without straps. My dress will have straps but they are more for decoration then real support... Pardon me for saying so but my "girls" need some serious support to avoid a wedding day Janet Jackson type of incident. Unlike interfacing, it is not a fabric but strips of flexible plastic or other hard material that gets sewn into "pockets" of the dress material. Think of a corset or underwire for a bra... It's like that.
2. Cut and Match Fabric Pieces to the Pattern
In the Phase 1 post, I talked about taking a day to cut out the pieces of the pattern that would serve as "templates" for cutting the material into the right shapes to make the dress. This is the part when those come into play.
Once you have cut the material into the shape using the pattern templates, you can match up the pieces, according to the pattern, to prepare to sew the pieces together to make the dress. The pattern walks you through this pretty clearly. The pattern doesn't call for pinning them all together first and putting them on your form but I think this step would be extremely helpful in making sure that you have all the correct pieces in the right places. It is kind of like a dress puzzle. At the end of this process you know what piece goes where and you're ready to start sewing the pieces together!!!
3. Fire up that Sewing Machine!
This is the moment we have all been waiting for! This is the part where the dress really starts to become something wearable. In my case, the 3 basic steps below, finalized the creation of the "shell" of my dress. The "shell" includes the lining (the part that touches your skin on the inside of the dress) and the shell of the outside. My dress also has a thin overlay that will be created after shell is complete that will match up exactly finalizing the dress to the point where you can begin to embellish and decorate it. Depending on the style of dress you're making this could vary but in almost all cases you'll have the lining and the outer section of the dress completed at the end of this step.
a. Sew the Pieces Together According to your Pattern- Sew all the pieces for the top together, including the zipper, boning, interfacing, and any other things your pattern calls for so you have a complete top section. Do the same for the bottom so that you have a completed but separate top and bottom section of the dress.
b. Make Adjustments- Once you have a top and bottom you can pin the two together and try them on to make sure that it is tailored to your body type. Since dress patterns are just a guideline, this step provides an opportunity to make tweaks so that the dress fits you specifically. Everyone is built differently so this is the part where the dress becomes custom to you and your build and will result in a well fitted gown that compliments your exact shape. This is also the time to hem the bottom of the dress based on where you want it to fall.
In my case we had to go back and adjust the length of how far the boning went down. The pattern called for the boning only to go down past the breast but when I tried it on, there was some significant puckering right where the boning ended. It looked weird. Extending the boning will smooth out the torso area.
c. Sew the Top to the Bottom of the Dress- After you have made necessary adjustments you're ready to put the top and bottom together to finalize the shell of the dress. The pattern should walk you through this just as it did when you were sewing the sections together for the top and bottom.
Phase 2 Complete! Those are the basics of actually getting a dress from pattern to something that you can put on your body. The next phase for me is to attach the sheer overlay and adorn it with beautiful decorations that promise to have some fun mushy stories to share.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
162 Days until the Wedding
I'm shocked at how seemingly quick and easy this is coming together. That is my cue to give another ginormous Thank You to Nancy for all she has done to make all of this seem like it is no sweat. I don't know if it is her experience or just her attitude for productivity but so far the phrase "easy peasy" keeps coming to mind. I'm not delusional though, I know that hard parts are on the horizon but so far I am so pleased with the progress.
I actually sewed my first stitch! Nancy did a LOT of work before I arrived and saved the "safe" pieces for me to do... you know.. because she's smart... I sewed all the pieces of the lining of the skirt with only a couple snaffoos...I sewed one seam inside out and then sewed a whole section of the lining into the rest of the lining because it got into my "sew path" without me knowing and because I was on such a roll (my new nickname is "Butter") I just blew right through and realized it about 20 stitches too late... had to tear it apart and then do it over again. A good helping of paying attention would have gone a long way to minimize these little problems. At the end of the session you could really see how well the dress we are making resembles the one I tried on at the bridal boutique.
This blog post has been a few weeks in the making because I've wanted to make sense of the pattern and the whole process so I could explain it in a way that anyone could read through it and be able to then go make a dress of their own. I am so grateful to Nancy because without her getting this far on my own would have been a lot more taxing. As she is teaching me I want to take that knowledge and put it in this blog so that it is easily (or at least relatively easily) replicated.
Here is what I have been able to decipher about bringing a dress pattern to life:
1. The Pattern is your Master
Before this, I had never even looked at a pattern to make clothing of any kind... (I know you're thinking "then why the hell would you want to make your own wedding dress?!" Because I'm a nutbag but mostly because Nancy was willing to be my guide. ) I wasn't sure how hard or easy it would be to figure out the instructions and what things the writers of the pattern took the liberty of assuming I knew when I actually knew nothing at all except for English... I'm pretty good at reading English...Initially I wanted to scan in my whole pattern to show each step as I described it but then I remembered that McCall's probably has a better lawyer than I do and that is just not a wedding expense that I can really justify. Instead I'll include pictures of the pieces of the pattern that were fundamental in my understanding of how the pattern works.
~ Highlight your pattern: The pattern I am using can be used to make two different dresses. If you're in the same boat I highly recommend going through and highlighting or marking all the pieces of the pattern that are relevant to the dress you are making.
~Figure out the lingo: This might be really obvious but make sure you READ THE PATTERN before doing anything else. If you're new to this, like me, you won't understand it all the first run through but that's what the glossary and pictures are for.
For me I didn't know anything about cutting layouts, stitch names, symbols used to show cut/fold lines etc, or seam allowances. Reading through the pattern and getting comfortable with the things I didn't know was important. Here are the greatest tools when doing that:
a. Glossary
b. Sewing Information Fabric Key
c.Seam Allowance Key
d. Cutting Layout Key
e. Google (Whenever a technique or word was used that I wasn't sure what they meant but they obviously were assuming I would know what they meant, I Googled it like the modern maven I am.)
When she read through the pattern though she mentioned that we needed to get some interfacing. I had no idea what she meant and she offered to find it because she knew what she was looking for. She explained that interfacing is the material used to provide shaping, reinforcement, firming and support. Generally interfacing is used for cuffs, collars, and things that need to maintain a shape but for our project, this was going to be the material that gave the top of the dress the sweet-heart look.
This wasn't on our initial list of things to obtain before getting started so we it made the "Extra Materials" list. We also added "boning" to this list of extra things we would need to proceed. I will also admit I giggled like a 12 year old boy at the thought of putting some boning into my dress... I'd make the inappropriate joke here about the dress leading to boning but... I guess the joke just made itself anyway....
Boning is not just a term for the naughty though, I learned after giggling... It is a lot like interfacing in principle as it is used to maintain shape and give support. The pattern I am using is for a strapless dress and in that kind of dress boning is used to provide the support needed to keep the top up without straps. My dress will have straps but they are more for decoration then real support... Pardon me for saying so but my "girls" need some serious support to avoid a wedding day Janet Jackson type of incident. Unlike interfacing, it is not a fabric but strips of flexible plastic or other hard material that gets sewn into "pockets" of the dress material. Think of a corset or underwire for a bra... It's like that.
2. Cut and Match Fabric Pieces to the Pattern
In the Phase 1 post, I talked about taking a day to cut out the pieces of the pattern that would serve as "templates" for cutting the material into the right shapes to make the dress. This is the part when those come into play.
Once you have cut the material into the shape using the pattern templates, you can match up the pieces, according to the pattern, to prepare to sew the pieces together to make the dress. The pattern walks you through this pretty clearly. The pattern doesn't call for pinning them all together first and putting them on your form but I think this step would be extremely helpful in making sure that you have all the correct pieces in the right places. It is kind of like a dress puzzle. At the end of this process you know what piece goes where and you're ready to start sewing the pieces together!!!3. Fire up that Sewing Machine!
This is the moment we have all been waiting for! This is the part where the dress really starts to become something wearable. In my case, the 3 basic steps below, finalized the creation of the "shell" of my dress. The "shell" includes the lining (the part that touches your skin on the inside of the dress) and the shell of the outside. My dress also has a thin overlay that will be created after shell is complete that will match up exactly finalizing the dress to the point where you can begin to embellish and decorate it. Depending on the style of dress you're making this could vary but in almost all cases you'll have the lining and the outer section of the dress completed at the end of this step. a. Sew the Pieces Together According to your Pattern- Sew all the pieces for the top together, including the zipper, boning, interfacing, and any other things your pattern calls for so you have a complete top section. Do the same for the bottom so that you have a completed but separate top and bottom section of the dress.
b. Make Adjustments- Once you have a top and bottom you can pin the two together and try them on to make sure that it is tailored to your body type. Since dress patterns are just a guideline, this step provides an opportunity to make tweaks so that the dress fits you specifically. Everyone is built differently so this is the part where the dress becomes custom to you and your build and will result in a well fitted gown that compliments your exact shape. This is also the time to hem the bottom of the dress based on where you want it to fall.
In my case we had to go back and adjust the length of how far the boning went down. The pattern called for the boning only to go down past the breast but when I tried it on, there was some significant puckering right where the boning ended. It looked weird. Extending the boning will smooth out the torso area.
c. Sew the Top to the Bottom of the Dress- After you have made necessary adjustments you're ready to put the top and bottom together to finalize the shell of the dress. The pattern should walk you through this just as it did when you were sewing the sections together for the top and bottom.
Phase 2 Complete! Those are the basics of actually getting a dress from pattern to something that you can put on your body. The next phase for me is to attach the sheer overlay and adorn it with beautiful decorations that promise to have some fun mushy stories to share.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
162 Days until the Wedding
Sites I found helpful in figuring out the Nitty Gritty of this post:
http://sewing.about.com/od/interfacingandstabilizers/bb/interfacing.htm
http://www.createforless.com/buying-guides/sewing-and-quilting/boning.aspx
http://restlessgrace.blogspot.com/2013/08/10-things-to-know-about-making-my-own.html
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