Sew you have found your dream dress, now for the perfect fit!

Here at The Bridal Box we can arrange all your fitting and alteration needs for you, so that you won’t have to worry a stitch about about looking anything less than perfect on your big day.It can be daunting and a nerve-wracking experience and hopefully this blog will help answer any worries that you may have and help give an understanding of the process involved.

We try our best to make sure that we order your dress in a size that is as close to your body measurements as possible, hence us getting friendly with a tape measure when you order!! Although a wedding dress is custom made it is not necessarily a custom fit and buying a sample dress is a whole different story.

An excellent seamstress can alter almost any wedding dress, but unfortunately we do have some limits and no magic wand. We will always be honest about what we can and can’t do 🙂

Among the things that can be altered are length, taking in or out, adding or removing sleeves/straps, tightening straps, adding bustle up ribbons and adding bra cups if required.. Things that can also be altered depending on the style of dress is reshaping necklines, removing trains, adding a corset back to a zip back style dress. We can also customise a dress by adding beading or lace.

Cost of alterations is not included in the price of the dress and we will always give you an estimated cost when you are ordering or at your first fitting. At the Bridal Box we try and keep this cost down by you paying the seamstress directly, instead of paying the shop to pay the seamstress.

There are many different things that crop up with wedding dresses that may cause the need for having your perfect dress altered; the most common is the length. The length of the dress is dependent on shoe choice and we will always ask you to have your wedding shoes available for your first fitting. Nobody wants to trip down the aisle, we will then alter the dress to the height of heels just skimming the floor, we want you to look like you are floating down the aisle!

Another very common alteration is taking in or letting out, which is mostly done when a sample dress is bought as it is rare that a sample will fit perfectly, however on occasion we do have to do this alteration to the custom made dresses. This can be for a range of different reasons, for example a bride may have weight loss through trying to loose weight, illness or stress, but we have the opposite where some brides gain weight through illness or stress. We have also had to deal with unexpected pregnancy, more common with bridesmaids than brides but we will always try our best to come up with a way to accommodate an unexpected and growing bump.

Wedding dresses are on the whole elaborately constructed, (we do have some simpler ones), and tend to involve multiple layers of fabric and or lace, boning and sometimes beading detail and this needs to be accounted for in time.

A specialist seamstress working in bridal wear will get booked up sometimes months in advance. While basic dress alterations can take up to a couple of hours some can takes weeks of work and fittings. A popular seamstress can have dozens of dresses that are being all worked on at the same time and that means scheduling.

At The Bridal Box we will make sure that we get you booked in, in plenty of time and will work closely with you to ensure you are happy with everything. Your first fitting will be approximately 6 – 8 weeks before your wedding or when the dress arrives depending on your individual circumstances.Depending on the work required we will then book either your final fitting, this will normally be a week before the wedding and at this stage if a corset back we will give whoever is dressing you a lacing lesson. If a lot of alterations are required you will be booked in for a second fitting and then on to a final fitting.

And lastly a few tips on what helps the seamstress get the perfect fit.

• Be honest, it saves time in something having to be redone.
• Imagination and trust. We do a lot of dresses, each one is special and the finished look can be hard to sometimes see through the pins, but trust that we can see through them.
• Tell us how tight or how loose you want it when we are pinning, it has to be comfortable to your body, you are the only person that can say this.

For us seeing your wedding pictures is the best part, sew we are here to make sure your dress fits you perfectly!

Words By Sarah Clark