Wedding dress!

Okay so here is a tip for doing a wedding on a budget: make your dress yourself, or find a friend who will do it as a gift for you.   One of my good friends got married this fall (on a budget, of course--we are frugal friendly in my circle), and I (with a lot of help from my mom) offered to make her dress.

The materials: silk and lace.  I took advantage of 50% off sales and coupons at JoAnn's to get their top-of-the-line fabrics, and the total was an astonishing $100!  Many girls pay more than that for their veil!

Muslin mock dress

So how did we do it?  First we made a mock dress out of muslin to make sure that the dress was the right size and fit.  Our burlap dress was a perfect fit (my friend has the build of a model), and so it was on to the dress.  For the most part, my mom and I followed the pattern instructions, just substituting an invisible zipper for the regular zipper.

At the second-to-final fitting we discovered that the dress was somehow a size too big.  No worries, though, because my mom is pretty much a fairy godmother and was able to make the dress stunning!