Now, for those of you ladies who have pretty, simple gowns that either have no train or a minimal train that you simply want bustled up with one or two or even three hooks, this post is not for you :) This is for those of us ladies who went big! We wanted the ball gown or the ridiculously long 10 foot train and we got it! It looks so gorgeous in pics, doesn't it?
But that thing is monstrous! You typically don't want to be carrying it around all night, so you want to have a good old fashioned beautiful bustle. Here you can see that Mr Fix It played 'train keeper' during our photo session.
Well, I opted for two bustles...because of the fact that my dress kind of had two different fronts/sides, we had two different bustles....a french bustle on the side where all those gathers are in the pic above (on the right) and a standard 'pulled up' bustle on the left where the dress had all the lace and beading. And in my fittings, it looked like this:
My amazing, seamstress, Janet Brunton (that's her in the pic above), did a phenomenal job of hemming my gown and adding the bustles for my sister (MOH J) to handle it mostly alone on the wedding day. She even used colored bows and tacks to help MOH J to know which little ribbon/tie went with which little hook (blue ribbon to blue hook, red ribbon to red hook). MOH J got real good at it in about 3 different fittings. She could handle it on her own even though we had cousin A (a fellow Bridesmaid) help her out on the last time just to have a helping hand. But see, on the day of the wedding, when it came time to do the bustling...yeah, it didn't work out that way.
Here's a pic of me and all my bridesmaids in our bridal cottage - the place where all the prep work (makeup, hair, dressing, etc) took place on the property. See that gown? It may not look it, but it's huge!
As soon as the ceremony was over, me, Mr Fix It, my sister J, and I piled into this room. Our officiant and Best Man were also there to sign the marriage license but then they headed off for cocktails. We had purposefully taken *ALL* of our photos pre-ceremony (yes, we had a first look that will come in a future recap if you didn't already see it in our video trailer). We didn't want to keep guests waiting for longer than an hour for cocktails and *we* wanted to enjoy the cocktail hour and that extra time with our guests.
Well, MOH J and BM A began bustling away with the little ribbons and the hooks. Now I don't know why, but it seemed like it was taking them longer than it did in the fittings. Like 20 minutes maybe! Did it take that long in the fittings and I just didn't realize it? Were they having problems stressed out about the actual wedding day? Who knows? I didn't really care...but Mr Fix It sure did. He let us know that he was getting antsy and wanted to head into cocktails. I asked him to wait for me because I had this image in my head of us heading up to the cocktail area together and making a pre-grand entrance with all the guests clapping and greeting us on the patio. But he just wanted to get out there without me! Little twerp! He began to get stressed and began to say that he was tired of waiting and we needed to hurry up. I knew that this was just stressing out my poor sister who had already had a long day (more to come). So I just told him to be patient..."It takes time to do this, baby...just a second and we'll be ready." He wasn't having it. So my options were to let him head up to cocktails without me or to just leave the bustle and forget it. I opted for choice B. I told my sister not to worry about the bustle...I was going to be changing out of the dress as soon as cocktails were over anyway so it didn't matter if it wasn't perfect for 45 minutes. I think that really disappointed my sister and probably made her feel like she was failing in her bustling duties. But I seriously did not care.
So we headed out to cocktails with my bustle half done and part of my train dragging on the ground...I didn't notice and I didn't care. And no one (especially not the photographer) got any pictures of me with the bustle anyway so who cares?!?
TODAY'S WEDDING TIP: Plan on giving yourself a good 20 to 30 minutes to handle the bustling of your dress. Don't be stressed...kick everyone out of the room that doesn't need to be there. Mr Fix It was really rushing us and stressing out my sis who had made such great effort to learn how to do it right. Let your maids do their job and don't let anyone rush them in doing something they have probably practiced several times already. And by the way, be sure that you take a maid or whoever will be handling the bustling with you to at least a few of your fittings to practice there with the seamstress!
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