My Final Dress Fitting!

I haven't written about my alterations experience yet. There are several reasons why...but mainly because I wasn't sure what all I wanted to talk about. I will do vendor reviews on all of my vendors, and my alterations lady will get her review then...but for now, I'll reveal my final fitting and try to leave my opinions for the later review post.

MOH and I showed up about 4pm on the Thursday (about 10 days) before our wedding. Norma quickly showed us to a dressing room and went to get my dress from the back. We went right to work getting me into my dress...and it was a little harder than I thought it would be!

After what felt like forever, I was in my dress and petticoat and shoes...and MOH was struggling to get my dress closed. Yes, ladies, I had a freak out moment when I thought that my dress wasn’t going to fit. MOH gave me a hard time, but since she hadn’t been there the other times to see that the corset flap (that hides behind the straps) was ALWAYS hard to fasten, she didn’t know. After that, we came out of the dressing room so that Norma could give MOH a hand in finding the bustle loops and learning the ins and outs of lacing up a corset. It was easiest to lace me up with the dress bustled, so unfortunately all the pictures show the bustle up, and none were taken with the dress skirt down...sorry! Here's a shot of the bustle:
Right off, we assumed that the best way to lace a corset was top to bottom. But we ran into a little problem. The last two loops on the left side of my corset were caught in the seam, so that they were sewn closed. To be perfectly honest, my Mom had noticed that when we picked up my dress in the first place, but I had forgotten all about it when I took my dress in for alterations with Norma. Oops! After a quick consultation with Norma, we decided to try lacing the corset from bottom to top and see if that worked better...I had a couple of thoughts about what I could do to fix the loop problem in the back on my own, but nothing could be done there in the shop.

In between lacings, MOH started to have a little TOO much fun!
Yes, she’s “driving” me like a wagon...I thought it was funny, but she didn’t think it was funny that I caught her doing it on camera! Another 10 minutes of lacing and we met with success. MOH had a minute or two of contemplation to figure out how to “tie” the ends off...in the end we settled on putting a knot after the last loop had been laced and tucking the remaining cords into the dress. Which meant that MOH had to dive under my skirts to pull them through. I guessed that I had better get to used to it, since I would need her help to pee the day of the wedding once I was dressed as well! We liked the look of lacing from bottom to top MUCH better. It looked okay, even if I wouldn't be able to fix the bottom two loops...

When we first put the dress on, the hem seemed a little long. But once I was all laced up, it fell just right. You could just barely see my toes peeking out...and my shoes looked gorgeous with the dress! Here I am, hamming it up for the camera. I'd say that I was a LITTLE bit excited to be in my dress...
When we got done and it was time to get out of my dress, I struck this pose dramatically in the dressing room and MOH had to recapture the moment on camera! It looks like that plastic bag is perched on my head, but it's hanging on the wall... All in all, a successful second fitting for my dress. And the total on the alterations was more than reasonable as well, it came out to just $75 plus tax, which was reasonable to me for a bustle and a hem. Norma brought B’s suit up to the front, and once I was back in street clothes, I paid for both things and loaded up the car again...little did I know that panic and mayhem would break out when we got home and B tried on his suit...

Stay tuned for more!