A few notes from my own wedding dress search (also getting married in August, woohoo!!):
- I'm suprised to find that most wedding alterations people are pretty cool about larger bodies. In fact, no one made me feel uncomfortable at all after numerous shops and several alterations discussions. And I was frankly petrified of this.
- Regular tailors aren't necessarily tops for wedding dresses (depending on whether you're going "real wedding dress" or not). I made this mistake with a BM gown for my brother's wedding... foudn someone people raved about as a regular tailor. And her work was just crap. Dress ended up popping a seam before the night was over. So I would advocate plunking down the little extra cash to go with someone who specializes in actual wedding gowns if you're doing a "true" wedding gown (or even BM dress/regular dress which is any fancier type fabric).
- If you want the measuments just to order in the meantime... a) whoever you order from will measure you if it's a store in most cases... b) if it's an online order, but for a true "wedding dress", these all tend to come with more than the usual amount of seaming for letting out dresses. so you're probably safe to measure yourself, though you might want to call the manufacturer to ask exactly where to measure if the site doesn't say.
- If you're buying a store as opposed to online, they can often reccomend a tailor. It might be a little more cost than Miscellanous Tailor, but I'd found that even if they aren't associated with the dress shop, the dress shop has some pull to browbeat them into timeframes/be your advocate in a way that you can't necessarily do on your own. So if short timeframe is an issue, this definitely comes into play (which it is for me).
Ok, done with totally unsolicited - in that it's not a Portland tailor -- input! :-)
I'm glad to hear your search for an alterations person was positive. That definitely eases some of the anxiety!
I'm ordering from Coco Myles, which is online only. They do say what measurements are most important on each dress, but what I'm having them do is I'm ordering the top and bottom as 2 different sizes and they're sewing those together as 1 dress, because I'm about a 16 on top and a 24 or so on bottom. I want to make sure that the size I purchase of each part is as close as possible, especially in case I don't have time for further alterations after it arrives (they say 5 weeks, and they're often faster, but I'm totally being prepared for the potential lack of time for proper alterations.)
Thanks for your help! I definitely got some good pointers here. I'm making sure I specifically ask about wedding dresses and the fabric of the dress in my queries so it's all out in the open right away.
- I'm suprised to find that most wedding alterations people are pretty cool about larger bodies. In fact, no one made me feel uncomfortable at all after numerous shops and several alterations discussions. And I was frankly petrified of this.
- Regular tailors aren't necessarily tops for wedding dresses (depending on whether you're going "real wedding dress" or not). I made this mistake with a BM gown for my brother's wedding... foudn someone people raved about as a regular tailor. And her work was just crap. Dress ended up popping a seam before the night was over. So I would advocate plunking down the little extra cash to go with someone who specializes in actual wedding gowns if you're doing a "true" wedding gown (or even BM dress/regular dress which is any fancier type fabric).
- If you want the measuments just to order in the meantime... a) whoever you order from will measure you if it's a store in most cases... b) if it's an online order, but for a true "wedding dress", these all tend to come with more than the usual amount of seaming for letting out dresses. so you're probably safe to measure yourself, though you might want to call the manufacturer to ask exactly where to measure if the site doesn't say.
- If you're buying a store as opposed to online, they can often reccomend a tailor. It might be a little more cost than Miscellanous Tailor, but I'd found that even if they aren't associated with the dress shop, the dress shop has some pull to browbeat them into timeframes/be your advocate in a way that you can't necessarily do on your own. So if short timeframe is an issue, this definitely comes into play (which it is for me).
Ok, done with totally unsolicited - in that it's not a Portland tailor -- input! :-)
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I'm ordering from Coco Myles, which is online only. They do say what measurements are most important on each dress, but what I'm having them do is I'm ordering the top and bottom as 2 different sizes and they're sewing those together as 1 dress, because I'm about a 16 on top and a 24 or so on bottom. I want to make sure that the size I purchase of each part is as close as possible, especially in case I don't have time for further alterations after it arrives (they say 5 weeks, and they're often faster, but I'm totally being prepared for the potential lack of time for proper alterations.)
Thanks for your help! I definitely got some good pointers here. I'm making sure I specifically ask about wedding dresses and the fabric of the dress in my queries so it's all out in the open right away.
Reply
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