Rachel Lamb Bridal Design

Back in the spring, I posted something along the lines of: "This year I'm making the shortest and the biggest wedding dresses I've ever made" or some such. I also posted on Facebook about cutting out the skirts for a dress and the hems being something like 40 metres long. (I can't remember the exact length, but I had measured it, and it was certainly  very long!!) Well this is that 'biggest' and 'longest hemmed' dress and it belongs to Karen, who got married to Mark in July this summer. Before I go any further, these pictures are taken by photographer Rachel Barnes . You may have been expecting an enormous dress from my earlier comments, and although full-skirted, it's not that big to look at is it? As you can see the proportions suit Karen really well; she's got the height to go with it. I meant 'voluminous skirted'! When Karen first contacted me, she showed me a picture of a full skirt with large pleats and wan...

This is Rachel wearing her fabulous floaty silk chiffon wedding dress. Rachel had specific ideas about the exact colour of her dress, which she didn't want to be standard ivory. After deliberating over many shades we chose a kind of pinky-goldy-champagne (can't be more specific!) type of colour that worked very well with the off white crochet-lace trims. Out of necessity, the chiffon on the dress bodice is all hand pleated and hand-sewn.  Rachel was very sure she didn't want a twinkly dress or any bling of any sort, the dress was a simple design where the chiffon was used both to provide texture and wafty floatiness. But we decided to add some pearls and tiny silver glass beads to the trims as well, which gives a tiny gleam to the ensemble. As Rachel is tall she can carry off this hipster style of dress well. She looks stunning!

Here's Dawn. She knew what she wanted and that was a red wedding dress, with some pleats and beading on it! So I set to and made it for her :) It was good to make Dawn's dress for her because apart from the pleasure of making it, it was nice to have a change of colour in my studio. Ivory is always lovely for wedding dresses, but this was a gorgeous rich red, which made a change for me and made Dawn happy! Dawn married her chap on a summer day in Ely (you can see the Cathedral in one of the images above) on one of the days when it wasn't raining, and the vibrant green of the well rained-on grass contrasts really well with her dress colour, I think. The pictures were taken by photographer John Wolfe, who very kindly sent these to me. You can visit his site here .