Making Your Own Wedding GownDon't whine to 24-year-old Amy Thomas about western wedding stuff. While most brides lose beauty sleep over details, Thomas is toiling at her Bernina sewing machine until 4 a.m. making seven dresses for her wedding, including her own gown. An aspiring designer of western wedding stuff, Thomas has taken on the tremendous, 10-month task of designing and sewing dresses for herself, five bridesmaids and the flower girl.
"This has been my dream," says Thomas, a graduate of Fort Worth Country Day. "I'd rather put up with the stress and have it mean something to me than buy something off the rack. "It's hard to trust anyone else with your own wedding," she adds. "I guess I'm kind of a perfectionist. I wanted to do it, and my parents supported me. " When Stan Thomas walks his daughter down the aisle on Saturday at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Amy's lifelong fantasy of creating her own wedding dress will be outshone only by the joy of marrying Jeff Lively of Plano. The groom will wear a Titanic-inspired black tuxedo with tails, white waistcoat and white tie. "He has to be wonderful to tolerate the mess that my sewing creates in my apartment," Thomas says with a laugh. After Lively's marriage proposal in December, Thomas immediately put her visions to paper. An award-winning fashion design major who graduated from Baylor University, Thomas had created several special-occasion dresses for clients, including bridesmaids and mothers of the bride, through her new design business, Amy Thomas Designs, in Dallas. For her own gown, Thomas visited top bridal stores in Dallas to research which style flattered her most. She chose a ballgown silhouette (she's making it of blush-pink satin) with an elegantly pleated full skirt that extends to a cathedral length. The bodice has a slightly dropped waist with empire seaming and closes in back with a row of delicate, covered buttons and a hidden zipper. "The highlight of the dress is the beading that covers the top of the bodice above the empire seam," Thomas says proudly. "I designed the beading pattern, which is a repeating Pattee cross motif. " She chose the Pattee cross motif because Pattee is the maiden name of her mother, Rinda Thomas, whose mother-of-the-bride dress Amy designed. It took one month to painstakingly draw the bead pattern. |