Not your usual wedding dress.....

Lizzie asked in the comments to the last post whether I'd ever blogged about my wedding dress that I made.  Well I did - it was actually my second ever post on this little blog, way back on 12 February 2008! It's funny you should ask, because not only was it our 7th wedding anniversary just two weeks ago but I also had my wedding photos out (still in the box not in an album!) because I had a coupon for greatly reduced canvases so I thought after all this time it would be nice to have one of them on the wall!

But I'm happy to oblige and repost some pics since you asked so nicely ha ha ha! And whilst we didn't have a wildly unusual or bizarre wedding, I didn't wear a standard white dress with bouquet in a church either.  We had a civil ceremony in the beautiful Chinese Gardens in Darling Harbour here in Sydney, followed up with a thirteen course banquet in a very fancy Chinese restaurant on Sydney Harbour.

Because spring in Sydney can be very hot (and indeed it was an extremely hot day), I decided to make a knee length dress in a traditional red colour:

I used McCalls 9395 (now OOP), with no modifications other than to lengthen the sleeves.  When I tell people that I made my wedding dress they think that I'm a highly skilled couturier until I tell them that the dress was just a very simple sheath dress with a mandarin collar! And the dress I wore was actually meant to be a practice version - it's made from a polyester brocade that I bought in Spotlight and it turned out so well that instead of remaking the dress it in a nicer silk brocade I just left it at that.  So my wedding dress cost me about $20 in the end!

I also chose not to carry a bouquet for the simple reason that I thought it be too much effort carrying around a heavy bunch of flowers all day! My bridesmaids and I made wrist corsages which were much easier to wear.

Speaking of the bridesmaids I also made their dresses from the same McCalls pattern, in a lilac brocade they selected from an Asian fabric store out in Cabramatta, which is fabric store mecca here in Sydney. I had to make the frog closures for their dresses from some silver cord because I couldn't find any to match the gold ones on my dress, but I think I did a pretty good job on making them.

Of course we had to have the obligatory Sydney Opera House shot:

And the reason why my husband is sitting in most of our wedding photos? 'Cos I'm a dwarf even in the highest heels compared to him!