Victorian Wedding Gowns

Victorian Wedding GownWe make some of the most amazing custom dresses out there.

You let us know a bit about yourself and your style and we start sketching.Victorian Wedding

This dress, however, is the one that I have been promising to post for the last few months:  My own wedding dress.

As a designer and dressmaker, choosing the right fabrics and details for a once in a lifetime experience is especially challenging.  Victorian Wedding Ceremony

I had so many strange and wonderful ideas and obsessions, spent so much time thinking about different colors and textures.

What I ended up making was partially based on a pattern that I recreated in my size from a Victorian-era fashion magazine, and partially emerged from my own fantasies and a lot of thought about what would look good on me.Bustle Gown

Gold Wedding DressThe base fabrics are hand-underlined silk duppionis:  iridescent gold and brown for the body, with flowers handcrafted in purple, teal, and gold-orange iridescent colors.

Victorian Steampunk BustleHand underlining the silks adds structure and wrinkle resistance and makes it possible to sculpt the silks into any shape you can dream up.

The front of the dress has a wide panel of tulle that is gathered over the base fabric to add dimension and texture.  The green detailing on the bodice is made up of many sewn on iridescent beetle wings.  The wings of these gorgeous Asian dung beetles can be pierced easily with a needle—a traditional Victorian needlecraft.

Steampunk WeddingMy hat is made from sculpted leather and was made to go with the outfit by ArtsMyths here in Denver.

So if we are making you a dress, we can definitely help you out with a hat as well, either a silk, straw or wool hat made by us or an incredible leather hat made by Tiffany Smyth of ArtsMyths and her workshop.

We specialize in making non-traditional wedding dresses.  Some of them are tea-length 1950s style dresses.  Some of them Victorian and Edwardian.  Some of them incredible fantasy dresses.  And many of them are in full color—white dresses are gorgeous but don’t look great on everyone.

We also do make dresses for customers all over the world.  To make sure we get the fit right, we mail you a cotton mock-up of the dress first to try on.  You send us digital pics of yourself wearing it, and we alter the pattern so that we can get something that fits you wonderfully.

We can make dresses to fit every size and shape!

If you are thinking about a custom dress, please contact us via email (superhero@vigilantelabs.com) and we will get started sketching something unique for you and sourcing gorgeous  fabrics from around the world.

Amazing photographs are by Denver/Fort Collins area photographer Sarah Christine Photography.  Be sure to check out her website if you are getting married in Colorado!

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