The pig wot got married - the dress

I'd always thought I'd make my own wedding dress. I knew it would test my sewing skills, but I like a challenge. However, the experience of making 4 bridesmaids's dresses for my sister's wedding made me rethink the idea. Even a simple dress takes lots of work to make it look good, the materials alone cost a lot and I decided I didn't really need the extra stress. So, a complete DIY was out of the question.

Then there was the matter of what sort of dress I wanted. I toyed for a long time with the idea of knitting myself an off-white Elfin Bride with beads, and wearing it over a corset and swishy skirt. I still want to knit Elfin Bride someday, but I was pretty sure I wouldn't have enough time to knit it in secret and I wasn't sure about getting it to fit as I wanted. My weight's fluctuated a lot over the last couple of years and I wasn't sure, even with a corset, I could get the tight fitting look I wanted without it being too tight.

Enter Wedding Bee. Where I came across beautiful lace dresses. Of course I now can't find the ones I fell in love with, but they were all lace, long and sleek in silhouette, often with a deep v neckline, no ruching or weird pick ups, just yards and yards of lace skirt and trains. I was in love. I also had no idea how I was going to find such a dress in a bridal shop, let alone afford one. I didn't want to spend hundreds and thousands on a dress, but I did want to feel like a bride.

Thus, I arrived at eBay. One night, having had a brief chat with some friends about looking for wedding dresses, I decided to have a search on eBay. I was vaguely looking at lace and/or vintage style dresses, wondering what I could find. There were very few all lace dresses, in fact I think I only found one. It looked good, the right necklace and a gorgeous waterfall train of lace ruffles - just enough ruffles to make the back gorgeous, but not enough to overwhelm the overall shape. I bid, not really expecting to get it, but reasoning that if by some chance I did, if it didn't work, I'd resell it. A few days later, I won, and not even at my maximum bid.



A few days later, she arrived, folded up in a box, all ruffly and lacey and ivory and beautiful. I tried her on at once and was instantly in love. This was my dress, for sure! She didn't quite fit, in fact getting the dress to go over my hips was impossible, but I figured I'd lose some weight with 6 months or so to go. This was wishful thinking!

Over the next few months, I kept looking at wedding dresses. Not totally seriously, but wondering if I should have a back up plan in case my slimming into the dress plan failed. But my dress was still there, waiting in her box. I knew, however much I looked, I wouldn't find anything I loved as much. A month or so before the wedding, it was obvious I wasn't going to fit into my dress as she currently was. A drastic plan was needed. While looking up how to make a bustle, I found advice on how to let out dresses, including the advice to create a lace up back. Lightbulb! At that point, my dress had a zip with little buttons alongside it. Easy to do up, in theory, but less forgiving of a variation in size. A post on an OBB forum gave me exactly the information I needed to make a lace-up back happen.

With less than a month to go, I went home to my parents' for a few days, where my dress was being stored, shopped in John Lewis and my new favourite haberdashery MacCulloch and Wallis and set about making my dress fit. I took out the side seams, almost all the way down and let them out as far as I could, removed the zip and created lacing loops along the centre back seam. I was pretty desperate and not at all sure it was going to work, until the moment when my mum laced me into the newly altered dress for the first time and suddenly, it all came together. It wasn't a perfect fit, but was it good enough and way better than it had been at first.

When it came to the time to put on my dress for real, I felt gorgeous! The dress hugged my curves in all the right places, swished at the bottom and trailed behind me beautifully. At my mum's insistence I added some tulle to the front neckline, making it a little less decollete. On the day, I felt beautiful and I felt like myself. What more could you want?



In lots of ways, I struck lucky. I didn't venture into a bridal shop, apart from a brief look at Oxfam's bridal shop in Cambridge, so hadn't even thought about the shapes that suited me. I was shopping based on fabric, rather than shape per se, and didn't really realised how fitted my dress was until I got it. In the event, I think the mermaid/fishtail/trumpet shape suits me well. The style is Begonia by Marylise. The few photos I've seen online really don't do it justice. I'm so happy I had the confidence to do the alterations that needed to be done. The overall cost was much less than the fairly modest amount I'd budgeted for it and there's no way I could have made something similar from scratch for that price. I've not seen a dress like it in the weddings I've been to recently, which makes me quietly happy. So, even if I didn't make it myself, I ended up with a dress that was unique, beautiful and very me.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The pig wot got married - wedding shawl

I was going to post about this at a point when it fitted into the story of our wedding day as told on my other blog, but a couple of people asked and I can't resist showing off. Here is my wedding shawl, in one of my favourite photos from our wedding day, taken on the portico of the Fitzwilliam Museum.



The pattern is Aeolian by Elizabeth Freeman, which seems to be a popular patten for wedding shawls, judging by Ravelry.

The yarn is a 4 ply silk I bought several years ago from Fyberspates. It's gorgeously soft and shiny, blocks beautifully and was the perfect colour to complement my ivory dress, purple shoes and purple and pink flowers. I didn't have quite enough to cast off, as the pattern uses a double strand, so I went stash-diving again and came up with a small quantity of aran silk from HipKnits, left over from this scarf. The weight of the aran is a little heavier than 2 strands of 4ply, but not much. The colours are similar to the body of the shawl, but darker, giving an extra pop of colour to the wavy edge.



In this photo (ignore my windswept hair and veil), you can see the beads better. They're creamy pearly beads, size 6, I think. Looks like I neglected to record where exactly I bought them. This was my first time knitting with beads and it wasn't as hard as I'd feared. I don't think I'd like to tackle the sort of project where you have to start by threading all your beads onto your yarn, but placing each one on the right stitch with a thin crochet hook was not too fiddly and very satisfying.

I'm very very pleased with the result. The shawl actually didn't get much wear on the day. I didn't put it on until after the group photos when we went off on our own for some more pictures and, once we got to the reception, I didn't need it for warmth. But it will always be my wedding shawl and when I wear it again (which I will, unlike the dress) I'll remember our wedding day and smile.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The pig wot got married - bridesmaids

I'm posting about my wedding on my other blog. I thought I'd post here about the things I made and bought in terms of clothes and decorations. Let's start with my lovely bridesmaids.



Here's Liz, in red, with Hannah (pink) and Debs (purple) just about visible behind her. They're all wearing the same dress, which is by Teatro and no longer seems to be online anywhere. All their dresses were bought on eBay. I wanted my bridesmaids to be dressed similarly, but not the same. I liked the idea of having many shades of pink, red and purple as my colour scheme. I didn't want to be stressing about finding exact colour matches for everything. If it was pink, red or purple, it was great! Having said that, within the BMs' outfits, there was a bit of colour matching to do, although some of it came about serendipitously.



The fascinators were the first thing I matched. I love fascinators, they're so much fun to wear. These ones came from Debenhams in the January sales. I think I paid full price for one, but the others were marked down by about 70%. They're all different and all (except the purple one) match the dresses perfectly.

The girls wore their own necklaces and shoes. The only stipulation I made about shoes was that Liz (who is shorter than me) could wear heels but Debs and Hannah couldn't. :) Debs wore some purple flats she already owned and Liz found some bargainous red LK Bennett heels for £5 in a charity shop.

The last thing I realised was that I needed to keep my bridesmaids warm. As I was knitting myself a shawl, I liked the idea of all of us wearing Bekki-knitted wraps or shawls, but I didn't really have the time to knit three more. A rummage through my wardrode produced two Clapotis - one in purple which perfectly matched Debs' dress and a second in purple and pink, which while not a perfect match, went well with Hannah's pink. The solution was obvious - knit a third Clapotis in red for Liz.

In the end, I don't think they wore them very much. These seem to be the only photographs in which all three bridesmaids are wearing their wraps. But it was pleasing to have us all wearing eBay-ed dresses and hand-knitted shawls.

woolly bride

woolly bride, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

What do you do at a hen party* for a knitter? You dress her up in a wedding outfit made up of many many knitted items. :)

This was the end result of a game in which my friends all brought knitted items to the party which were gradually pinned on to make me a woolly wedding outfit. I had to guess the answers given by Rob to questions about our relationship. If I got the question right, I got to choose and pin on an item. If I got it wrong, the person reading out the question did. The final ensemble was very colourful and very warm. Note the awesome bouquet made out of bobble hats and gloves. (And Bendy Bob, who escaped from 'The Big Taboo'). Maybe if it's freezing cold in 19 days' time, I'll wish I was wearing something like this?

*US: Bachelorette party.

Not dead - busy

Hello there. I am still alive, and still knitting. Most of my knitting projects are wedding related, though there's a batch of baby cardigans and some socks I could show off.

My wedding shawl is finished, but not blocked, but I'm not going to show if off until after the wedding, I think. Will try to post a few FOs this week, but after that, I think I'm going to be in wedding-prep land. :)

Roll on 20th March! (40 days to go).

wedding shawl beginnings

Wedding shawl swatches, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

It's time to do some knitting for me! I originally planned to make my own wedding dress, but having made bridesmaids' dresses over the summer, I decided I could do without the stress. So instead I bought one from eBay, which may need some adjustments (and I need to lose weight to get into it), but it is beautiful and I couldn't possibly make something like that myself. So instead, I will knit myself a wedding shawl. I'm getting married in March, it's bound to be a little chilly and a beautiful shawl is the perfect way to keep warm.

Some searching on Ravelry and posting on the Cambridge Ktog board lead me to Aeolian. Now I need to decide on a yarn. I originally thought I'd make something cream/offwhite, but talking to people made me think about colour. Then I found this silk 4ply yarn in my stash. It's softly variegated in shades of lilac and pink - perfect for my colour scheme and the romantic lace of my dress.



I love the colour and the feel of it. The only problem with it is that so far, I havent found beads which fit onto the yarn. I've got sime size 9s and size 8s, both are too small. If I found some beads which fitted, went with the colours (I'm thinking either a pearly bead or a metallic/pearly lilac), I'd go with this yarn.

There's also a laceweight option.



This is some hand-painted laceweight I acquired at the most recent stash swap. I think it came from Jackie and was painted by Heather? I should probably message them to check. If so, I could ask Heather to dye me some in similar soft colours to the silk. The beads on it are (L-R) pearly lilac, pearly cream and a metallic darker purple.

Of course, neither of these swatches have been near my dress yet. I'm going to my parents' house where my dress is hiding this weekend, so I shall take my swatches, see what goes and go from there. So, what do you think? Which yarn? Which beads? Decisions, decisions.

wedding cake

wedding cake, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

This was a joint effort. The bottom tier is fruit cake made (in a bucket) by my mum and Hannah's now husband Steve. The upper tiers are chocolate (made to this recipe) made by me and my mum (the top layer was gluten-free for my dad and grandma). We covered the cakes with ready made icing and added lime green polka dots and brown ribbon.

The finished cake was very heavy and tricky to transport, but we did it. (Well, my mum and dad did). It looked good and tasted pretty good too.

bridesmaids' dresses

bridesmaid, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Rather a lot of the past 6 weeks has been spent making bridesmaids' dresses. With a chocolate brown and lime green theme, it was the easiest way to get four dresses which (semi) matched. This is mine, which I spent most of the day hoiking up. Oops. Not as well fitted on the bust as it could have been.

The pattern is Vogue 7848. The fabric is (scarily expensive, but rather lovely) silk satin from Borovick's. I don't have pictures of all four of us, but here's Anna, along with my gorgeous sister Hannah.



My other sister Debs is 33 weeks pregnant, so she needed a different style of dress. This isn't the best angle, but you can see the empire line and straps of her dress (Burda 7630).



The silk was a little intimidating to cut and sew, but with some patience, fine pins and lots of tissue paper, I got the hang of it. It felt gorgeous to wear and looks pretty good in the photos I've seen. Debs felt a bit too hot, but I think she'd have been too hot whatever she wore. The silk sashes tended to slip very easily, of course. I'm pleased with my work, though it has put me off the idea of making bridesmaids' dresses for my own wedding. I want to make my own dress and I think I'm going to have enough on my plate without adding 4 more. Though maybe I'll make a dress for the smallest bridesmaid...

What I've been up to

pom poms!, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

For the last few months, I have been mostly making these. My sister got married yesterday in a lime green and brown pom pom strewn wedding. We made a few hundred pom poms in different sizes to be used as decorations and thrown as confetti.

The inspiration came from this wedding blog - How engaging! - and this gorgeous post in particular. Way back when HP got engaged and started thinking about wedding colour schemes, she liked the idea of using chocolate brown and maybe lime green, but wasn't totally sure. I think showing her that blog helped her decide that it could work and was definitely a big influence on the final scheme. I'm going to blog some of the other things we made for the wedding, but if you can't wait, click through for some tasters on flickr.