'The Shoes'

I realised today that there are nine weeks left until my fiance & I get married... And I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't even considered what shoes I will wear, (shock horror).

So tonight I frantically searched the Internet for options and now I'm torn... My dress is quite long & so chances are you won't really see the shoes I'll be wearing, so the question I have to ask is do I go for something more traditional, even though I will probably never have any need to wear ivory shoes again or do I get something a little bit crazy that I'll definitely wear again, but may not really be classed as 'wedding shoes'. HELP ME!!!

Here are my favourites at the moment on the traditional front:

Christian Louboutin 100s


Manolo Blahnik "Carolyne" Slingbacks


Alan Pinkus "Belle"


Here are my options for something a little less traditional, I love red, but I also don't have my something blue yet so I thought these would be interesting...

Manolo Blahnik "Something Blue" Pumps


Viktor & Rolf Pumps
Thakoon Mirror Mosaic Sandles (outrageously expensive, but still super cool... come on super sale!)

'The Dress' Status Update - Corset Complete

This week is my wedding dress week. I hope to have the dress (almost) complete by the 4th of January. It will still be missing some buttons (I'm getting custom silk covered buttons ordered in) & won't have been hemmed (because I have been lazy & haven't got my shoes yet...). But both of those jobs are fairly easy & won't take too long.

I finished the corset section this morning. It's more structural than anything and will hold the dress (mainly the skirt) up, so that the load of 10m of silk won't be transferred to some of the more delicate fabrics I'm using. Even so, I'm not going to post any pictures until after the wedding (sorry girls). In the mean time though, here are some shots that my mother took today 'to prove that I actually made it'.


Today I'll be cutting out the skirt & sewing it. Tomorrow will be the top section & finishing. I might get a chance to do the veil too.

Later this week I'll also start work on the Malanka* ball dresses. There will be two this year, a short semi-formal one for Geelong & a long evening gown for the masquerade ball in Melbourne. I'll try & take some photos to upload.

*Malanka is the name of old calender new years eve in Ukraine. My fiance is Ukrainian & every year in Melbourne & Geelong there are big parties to celebrate.

Karen Millen

One of my favourite stores at the moment is Karen Millen.

It's one of my favourites for a few reasons, firstly, the clothes there are really well made with good fabrics. For instance, everything is lined. You might think I sound really old fashioned for admiring this, but I've found as many companies try to cut costs, the lining of dresses & tops is one of the first things to go.
The second reason I like them is the patterns, everything is cut well, (for my shape anyway :P), there are no odd bumps or lumps. If I could make patterns like that, I would be a very happy camper... (or seamstress...)
The final & perhaps one of the greatest reasons why I like Karen Millen is they sell whole outfits. You can buy a nice dress & jacket there, but then you can also pick up matching shoes, bags & belts. The accessories aren't just in the same colour, they are well matched, often covered in the same fabric, picking up the details of the jewels or patterns used in the dresses.

Needless to say, when I was in a frantic rush to find a dress, because I hadn't had a chance to make one & was flying out to Canberra at lunchtime to go to a wedding, this store was my first & only choice.

In the pictures I'm wearing dress & belt from Karen Millen, shoes from Wittner*, bag from Target ($8 - one of the best bargains I've had all year).

*OMG the most painful shoes I have ever worn! They are not shaped very well at all & all the pressure is concentrated at the back of the balls of your feet (right near the arch). Also the toe points up a bit so you don't really have any contact on the ground with your toes. It's my own fault really, when I bought them I was in a super-hurry & wanted black patent pumps NOW, so I didn't spend the time I should of testing the comfort factor.

Bridesmaids

Now that I have my wedding dress somewhat organised it's time to move onto the more difficult terrain of dressing two of my closest friends who have kindly agreed to be my bridesmaids.

Bridesmaids dresses are so difficult. I don't like the idea of dressing two girls in the exact same outfit when their sense of style & personalities are so very different. I'm a big fan of different dresses in the same fabric or matching fabrics. At the same time I want them to both look like part of the bridal party & not just another guest. Both of my girlfriends are in their mid-20s so I also wanted to avoid putting them in a dress that made them look like they were off to a high school formal. Add to all of that a fear of imposing upon your friends or worse still putting them in a dress that they consider equivalent to a peach taffeta nightmare, & you can see why this was stressing me out more than my own dress.

Thank-fully I have been very lucky. My girlfriends have so far been remarkably patient & open-minded, the best kind of bridesmaids!). The three of us have very different tastes in fashion so it has made shopping for fabrics & selecting dress styles quite challenging, but I think we have finally reached agreement on the design of the dress.

The girls will have different dresses with a similar style. The setting for our wedding is an old mansion & gardens so the general style is still quite traditional, so we selected a couple of vintage patterns for the dresses.

Without further ado, here are the designs:


Patterns: Butterick B4918 & Vogue V2962

We haven't really decided what the decorations will be. Possibly fabric flowers, beads, crystals, who knows, but we'll find something that we all like.

Tomorrow I'll be making toiles for the girls, I'll post some more pictures when the girls try them on. Once the toiles have been adjusted I'll have to transfer adjustments back to the patterns & move on to the official dresses.

My new favourite shoes!

It was my engagement party on the weekend & because I like to wear new shoes on special occasions, I ordered a pair of shoes I'd been lusting after for quite some time now... a pair of Marc Jacobs misplaced heels.

I have to say they were worth every single penny! Yes, they felt a little weird at first but after 5 mins they were SUPER easy to walk in. Plus they looked fantastic. I love how abstract they are, I love how plain & simple the shoe is but just by moving the heel, they suddenly look like they are from another dimension.

I was also amazed at how many people, who normally never notice or comment on fashion*, were commenting on them. I think more photos were taken of my shoes than of my fiance & I, which felt kind of weird given it was our engagement party. The boys from my work are still talking about them - I might wear them again to the Christmas party just to freak them out some more!

I love these shoes, I'm so happy I spent the money to buy them, I don't care that they were expensive because they are works of art. Everyone I spoke to loved them because they'd never seen anything like it before. I think that's what makes these shoes so wonderful, in a world filled with knock-offs & 'inspired-by's, these shoes are completely fresh & original.

For me this is one of the things that links engineering & fashion for me. I love moments in both fields when somebody does something different. They turn the world on it's head, do something completely original and yet once revealed it seems so simple & ingenious, we wonder how it was that we never even thought of it.

* Most of my friends are engineers, for many of them fashion is weird thing that only has relevance in a distant world, many light years away.

The Dress

Over the last couple of weekends I've spent hours & hours (roughly 5 hours counts as hours & hours right?) in bridal stores around Melbourne looking for 'The Dress'. I love shopping, I love putting on beautiful things & parading around. I thought this would be fun, this would be a great laugh. I'd try on a few silly yuk dresses to make my girlfriends roll around on the floor laughing, before emerging in 'The Dress'. I was wrong.

After my hours & hours (5 or maybe 6) spread over two weekends I was exhausted. I was sick of being belittled & treated like a child by overbearing sales assistants. I didn't want to see another puffy drop-waisted dress that used copious amounts of beading & lace to cover up bad seam lines. I was tired of being lectured about how close my wedding is & how hard it will be for them to make a dress in 4 months. If that was the case why did you even give me an appointment?! I was completely deflated.

BUT... I refused to have a complete nervous breakdown*. After the last shop, my mother, the queen of tact & timing, suggested we take a break & go look at fabrics for the bridesmaids, (I'm making their dresses). I agreed & we went to one of my favourite fabric stores in the city. Eventually we started looking through the patterns and there it was. Superb! A pattern that was very nearly the exact dress I wanted... From there things just kept rolling, it was one stroke of luck following another, before I knew it I had found another couple of patterns which I could use for modify the first pattern to get it to the exact dress I wanted! Brilliant! I knew it was meant to be when I went to pay & it was only $20 because they were all on sale! Then my darling Mother reminded me that my Dad is going to China in a week & could pick up the silk for me over there on the cheap. Suddenly I was on top of the world. I was enjoying myself again.

To celebrate I took my wonderful Mother to Bistro Vue, (my favourite french bistro in Melbourne), where we sipped Veuve, enjoyed our lunches & and got excited about my wedding all over again.

* That evening I was explaining the days trials & tribulations to a friend who in turn told me about a girl she'd been maid of honor for. My poor friend had been dragged around to dress shops every single weekend for two months, before the girl decided that the first dress she'd tried on was in fact the one for her. I'm so glad I didn't break down, my friend is an absolute angel, I don't know how she did it.

EXCITEMENT!!!

So I've been quite busy lately & have neglected the blog somewhat, but I have a good excuse. I got engaged a month ago!

The last few weeks have been drifted by in a haze of champagne & parties & we haven't even had the engagement party! Somehow though we've made an enormous number of decisions in just a couple of weeks. We've even picked a venue & booked it. The best bit is there's less than 6 months until the wedding!

Now I'm super excited because with all the big decisions out of the way, this weekend will be filled with oooos & ahhhhs as I hit the shops with my mum & bridesmaids to find a dress. I've spent the better part of the last week trawling the internet & flicking through magazines looking for dresses I would wear. Here are some dresses I've fallen in love with;

Oscar de la Renta

Elie Saab