In four days Gareth and I will celebrate our TEN YEAR wedding anniversary. I can’t quite believe it! A DECADE.
With such a momentous milestone coming up, last year I started to think about ways we could celebrate. While moving over the summer, I pulled my wedding dress out of the back of my wardrobe to bring it over to the new house and I realised, bar a few photo shoots at the start of my blogging career (anyone remember these?!) it’s pretty much sat there, collecting dust and getting all moth-eaten, since then. It’s actually kinda sad when you think about it. You spend such a happy, important day in this dress and then it’s either sold on, trashed or, like mine, relegated to the back of a closet.
So, my dress wasn’t the most ‘out there’ wedding gown you will have ever seen and the fact I rocked some Converse was pretty fucking revolutionary (the pink veil photo was a shoot, I wish I’d been brave enough to add some colour to my actual wedding day look!) But when I was looking for a dress in 2007 the wedding industry was such a different place. In fact I don’t think I saw ANY dresses that weren’t strapless. I mean, I’m sure they existed, but without a resource like Rock n Roll Bride to guide me I had no idea where I’d even look for something more alternative.
My dress was by Sottero and Midgley, and if I’m totally honest, it was the first one I tried on that I didn’t absolutely hate. I asked the shop if we could replace the original baby pink sash with a black one which it caused quite a few raised eyebrows! How very edgy. Also, can you believe we had a monochrome themed wedding? Oh how things have changed!
So here I was, almost a decade later, planning for our big anniversary and wondering what we could do to mark the occasion. People ALWAYS ask me what we’d do differently if we were getting married now (hint: E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G) and so I thought it would be really amazing if I could rework my dress and turn it into the kind of gown I’d like to wear if I was a 2018 bride!
There was only one lady I wanted to help me with this project: Jo of The Couture Company, based in Birmingham. Now usually The Couture Company don’t upcycle other dresses, all their gowns are made to order, totally unique and made exactly to the bride’s ideas and specifications, BUT she’s a friend and so when I told her my idea she jumped at the chance to be involved! I went up to see her late last year with my dress in tow and we came up with a plan of attack.
