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A long time coming…. finally, here are the photos of my wedding dress! Or I should say… wedding dresses!

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Yes, I decided to wear a different dress for my ceremony and reception like many other brides nowadays. I wanted something big and dramatic for my ceremony to overlook the wild west coast and the Pacific Ocean, and also wanted something fun and flirty to dance in for my reception.

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If you were someone who has followed my blog for a while, you know I had a wedding dress vote a while ago as I couldn’t choose between two dresses that I tried on at Kleinfeld’s in New York. It was between a very sparkly full pleated Pnina Tornai dress and a structurally unique and fashionable Monique Lhuillier dress. So what did I choose?….

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… well, I couldn’t choose. So I decided to get two custom wedding dresses made by the fabulous haute couture designer Manuel Mendoza that incorporated all the things I loved in my wedding dress search and would fit my wedding and my personality. Manuel and designer Alison Hartford helped me bring my dress vision to life and I can’t be thankful enough for everything they did for me. It is with great sadness and tears as I write this post that I remember the late Manuel Mendoza. Unfortunately he passed away a month ago due to sudden illness. Allan and I are humbled and honoured that our lives were touched by Manuel in such a positive and brilliant way. Manuel was also so cheerful and helpful in aiding both of us with our designs, and in some moments he was even more excited than us for our designs and our wedding. Thank you Manuel for everything — this one’s for you!

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For my ceremony and first half of my reception, I designed a large ballgown with a sweetheart neckline made from ivory Italian silk orchidea fabric that was rich and luxurious, and would be thick and stiff enough to hold up all of the structural elements. We also designed some beautiful Swarovski flowers that would be scattered over the entire dress.

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The sweetheart neckline was supported with a large band that wrapped around into a bow in the back. The structural peaks of the dress came up to the waist of the dress and started the draping that continued into the bottom of the dress.

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Manuel and Alison also designed me a cathedral length veil with a blusher made of fine tulle.

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The dress ran floor length and had a simple hemline.

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Although it doesn’t look like it much in photos, the dress was very very full and had hundreds of layers of tulle underneath. Thanks Alison for bearing with me as we kept added more and more layers! It was actually quite difficult to move in at times and everyone had to give me a wide berth — hahaha.

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Here I am running in the dress… harder than it looks!

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The dress had a cathedral length train to match the veil…

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… and was quite long!

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I loved how the fabric looked in the natural light… the ivory seemed to catch the light nicely.

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And held up to a lot of abuse no matter where we went

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Here’s a shot of the back of the dress… I really wanted something full with pleats.

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This is a better shot of the back detail… you can see how the pleats pull from the front into the back with the wide waistband turning into a large bow. The Swarovski flowers were scattered everywhere and there was some lace covering the back to bring some femininity to the back of the dress.

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The large bow and the lace were actually very structural and took some work to get them to hold up on their own. Sadly my hair ended up covering up the back of the dress quite a bit!

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I was most happy with the fabric of the dress… it looked great all day and still looks beautiful now after cleaning. It was very luminous without being reflective and didn’t wash out in too many of the photos! Well, plus we had fabulous photographers In this photo you can see the Swarovski covered comb that held the veil.

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I wore the ballgown throughout the day into the night and most of the reception, including through the toasts and the father-daughter dance. I wanted to wear it as long as possible But as soon as the dancing started, I switched into my mini reception dress! With this dress I was inspired by some of the tulle dresses by Vera Wang with the black bows, and I wanted a short soft tulle number to dance around in.

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Manuel Mendoza also created this custom dress for me, with fine tulle wrapped up over a sweetheart neckline with structural pulls in every direction to get a chaotic sort of tulle look in the bottom of the dress.

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The large black bow was wrapped around the entire dress and also served as a sash and halter tie.

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It was able to withstand lots of hugging and dancing…

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… and ocean…

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… and carrying…

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…and well, lots of stuff.

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But what about surfing?

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Well, that’s a story for next time

All photos copyright by the best Vancouver wedding photographers JONETSU Studios… thank you guys!

Follow @VancityAllie

Tags: BC, black bow, bow, crystals, Custom, flowers, forest, lace, Manuel Mendoza, Monique Lhuillier, orchidea, Pnina Tornai, sand, silk, surfboard, Swarovski, Tofino, trash the dress, tulle, veil, wedding, wedding dress, wedding gown, West Coast, woods

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2012 at 9:05 am and is filed under Wedding/Relationship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.