Saturday, October 6, 2012

the $49 dollar prom dress

This post is SO late. Screamapillar kindly reminded me the other day that I never posted about Prom last spring.

I doubted I would be able to top last year's $26 prom dress, and so far I haven't. This year's dress came from a bridal outlet (....where we may or may not have been looking for a big white dress for somebody else...). My little sister referred me to this place, and I must say I was quite impressed. They had a plethora of beautiful bridal gowns (an absolute plethora I say!), and probably twice as many formal dresses in every color of the rainbow.

I knew before we even got in the car what color dress we were going to come home in...even though we tried lots and lots of things like this:




and this:


Looks like she didn't like this one much. Nice face, dere.

They were very pretty,  but didn't scream "SCREAMAPILLAR" at me...

This one did.


Toxic Lime Green.

The gown only had a halter type strap on top, so bolero time again. She chose pink for the bolero to match the ruffle at the hem, and did all the beading herself. The petticoats underneath are just a bridal petticoat with the top layer pinned up to expose the tulle. We did add one yard of gathered pink tulle over the white layers to add a little more pink (and we only attached it with SAFETY PINS!!!).

The original dress was also backless with just the corset strapping baring quite an expanse of flesh, so Mommy had to fix it some. I just pinned a piece of tissue paper to the back of the dress to create a pattern for the area I needed to fill. Cut two from matching fabric (that was the hard part, actually), sewed it together, turned it right side out, and hand stitched it down the right hand side of the dress back. I put in hooks on the left side to keep it in the right location, but the lacing pretty much held it in place.

Unfortunately, when laced up it looked kinda bunchy, but the bolero covered most of it so it didn't look too bad. At least she passed the dress code and didn't look scandalous....



At the end of the evening, she managed to accessorize with some stuff that didn't quite match:



YEA NOT PROM QUEEN!!! The sash for queen was white, and that would have just been too normal looking.....

Congratulations, Screamapillar, for winning 2nd attendant, you are so completely awesome.

And in case you didn't notice.....her date had a very unique boutoniere... but that (and her matching shoes) are fodder for another post...
.









Thursday, October 4, 2012

...worth a thousand words...

After many much waiting.... we have some wonderful photos from the reception. I have been really looking forward to these, if for no other reason, because I was under the influence of some heavy duty pain killers after blowing out my knee earlier that day. My recollection of the evening was pretty hazy, and I was sitting here with fingers crossed for the last 9 weeks.

At last they are here, and I have picked my very favorites to share with you. The old saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words," but some of these need captions.

Enjoy.



"Touch not my dear husband, or I shall smite thee, brother mine"





TEAMWORK. (Hard to make such a wonderful cake with three and a half arms to work with)




"Ummm. Uncle Scopp, when I leaned over to hug Grandma, she ran over my dress with her wheelchair  and now I'm stuck..."



"Yeah, we all know I'm the cutest bridesmaid."




"I told you I could be trusted to not smoosh cake all over your face!"



"You did WHAT with the cardboard cutout of our missionary bridesmaid????"



The bride gets her first glance at the gift table.



Daddy - daughter, mother - son


(After dancing with her daddy)





Okay, before you look at this series, you need to know it's title.


THE GARTER CONSPIRACY

(please excuse the poor groom his confusion, as he was completely unprepared for what transpired)
Who knew? Superhero bloomers.



As I mentioned earlier, much of the evening is a blur in my memory. I'm really glad our photographer was able to make sure I didn't miss a moment of Eclair's exploits as she spend entirely too much time unsupervised: