The wedding is over, you’re happily installed in a new home you share with your honey, and it suddenly occurs to you that your wedding dress – your gorgeous, dreamy, heart stopping wedding dress – is packed up in the back of your guest room closet. Taking up space. A year ago, you said you’d keep it forever, save it for your future daughter. Sell it? God, no. Trash it? Gasp! But now time has passed and the glow of the wedding is fading. You know the chances of your daughter wanting to wear your wedding dress are slim, and your bedroom closet is overflowing with clothes and shoes and shoes and shoes.
What, you ask, what is a former bride to do? She can sell it, sure, though the market for secondhand wedding dresses ain’t all that. She could preserve it in a box and put it out of sight in the attic where at least it’s not taking up valuable shoe real estate. Or she can give it away to some needy bride or charity that will do good with it. Those are her options. None of which allow her to have her dress and get rid of it, too. That’s why I’d like to add yet another post-wedding wedding dress option: Have artist Jessica Mandala create a one-of-a-kind sketch or painting of that wedding dress that’s just gathering dust.
Mandala says: “A wedding gown is so unique – it is the garment chosen for the day when a woman will feel she is at her absolute best – when she will be the most beautiful woman in the room. This is perhaps the most carefully selected (and expensive) outfit a woman will ever wear. And she wears it for just a few hours. I love exploring this choice, what it says about the wearer, and it is my great privilege to commemorate it.”
Isn’t that what photos are for?
What an interesting and fun idea! You’ve already got the pictures, so a drawing/painting would be very unique. Thanks for sharing!
My friend does a similar type of painting (http://www.etsy.com/shop/blablover5). Such a great idea!
You’ve left out my favorite option of what to do with your wedding dress after the event. That’s dye/alter it so that it can be worn again. I think that just about any wedding dress would be lovely hemmed to knee or tea length and dyed a different color. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted these photos before, but here’s my dressbefore and after.
I think it cost me about $20 for the alterations, and $5 for the RIT dye.
I did the same thing with an old prom dress, but that time I removed the rosettes and then hand-painted the dress using stencils and spray-fabric-paint.
@ Toni: I love it! I’ve had the same idea for my (eventual, I hope) wedding dress. What kind of fabric was yours? I would think that the ideal would be a raw silk, if you can afford it… But I do adore the paintings. How much fun would they be to hang in your little girl’s room someday?
I don’t know exactly what material my dress was, but I know it wasn’t silk. It was probably some sort of synthetic, but it still dyed beautifully, even the tulle.
@Toni
I’m going to do the same thing. I’m making my gown (I’m a seamstress so that isn’t as crazy as it sounds) and I actually designed it to it could be altered, dyed and worn again. Also, wedding dress portrait=another one of those strange wedding thingies I just don’t get.
@Toni I think the only time I regret not having a white wedding dress is when I see how awesome your dyed dress turned out!