Saving Sadie's Dress (Part 1)

2022 marked the busiest year so far in bridal alterations here at JS&S. I'll never forget the phone call I recieved from a mom who was desperate to get her daughter's dress resized in time for her wedding portraits, which were only a few weeks away. Hearing the urgency in her voice, I set up an appointment as soon as I could.

They entered my home with a beautiful pearl wedding gown. It was full, the bodice fully pearled and the back had a pretty button and loop system, a lovely princess dress.

At our initial fitting, there was about an 6" gap across the back, and her dress would no longer zip up.

With big resizes like this, I like to do things in stages. So my first objective, was to get the back to zip and close. Bust and everything else could wait, we needed to get the dress closed. Sadie, wished to keep the original back so a corset back was out of the question. In order to get her dress to close, I ended up doing 3" mesh panels under her arms, that allowed the back to meet, zip and close. This process meant taking the whole bodice off the skirt, taking out the original mesh panels that were there and adding new, wider panels. We ended up using a compression mesh on the sides to give more stability.

We were all over the moon at the second fitting to see the dress zip up! Then it was onto fitting the front of Sadie's gown.