Special day, extra-special dress
As every bride-to-be knows, happily, when it comes to selecting a wedding gown, the choices are virtually endless, with myriad designer name brands and countless variations of silhouettes, embellishments, fabrics, price ranges and hues. But what happens if none of the options are ... well, optional?
Maria Felix, 31, of Seaford, was looking for a specific type of wedding dress for her June wedding: a 1950s-style, ballet-length gown. A tall order, but one especially so for this petite bride.
"I'm pretty tiny -- 5 feet tall and 95 pounds. It's always hard for me to find clothes," she says. So securing a specific type of wedding dress that fit her diminutive frame perfectly was quite a challenge. "I went to about five bridal shops and tried on about a hundred dresses," she says, but "when trying on samples, they were so huge on me that it was hard to tell what it would look like."
Refusing to settle, this bride had her dress custom-made, an increasingly popular tack women are taking for a number of reasons, stature and frame among them.
A custom-made dress "is made to your body, starting from scratch," says Maryann Greco, who co-owns with her daughter Adrienne's bridal salons in Islip and Manhattan. This, of course, guarantees a perfect fit.
And that's exactly what Bellport's Kellie O'Brien, 28, got with her one-of-a-kind dress fashioned at Solotu in St. James. However, she says she opted for a custom creation because, when browsing for dresses, she seemed to favor various parts but never a whole, ready-to-wear gown. "I knew that by doing custom, I could create my own." The result was a romantic gown that coordinated with the wedding cake and other aspects of the reception. The bridesmaids, mother-of-the-bride and mother-of-the-groom's dresses also were custom. "All the colors flowed together, which made it really nice for pictures," O'Brien says.
Ideally, the bride-to-be should have an idea of what she wants her dress to look like, the experts say, and it's helpful to bring in a few pictures as a starting point. After brainstorming, a sketch is made. "We take complete body measurements, produce swatches, talk about how to construct it," says Greco.
While the process, which can take several months, can be exhilarating, "You want to work with someone who's going to listen," cautions Raffaella Galeotafiore, owner of Solotu, "and who understands different silhouettes and how to make them come to life."
And be prepared to spend extra for a one-of-a-kind wedding gown. Felix was lucky. Her dress cost about $700, because a friend of her mother's made it for her.
O'Brien's dress cost $5,800. Custom generally costs more than off-the-rack
"Fabric is expensive, labor is costly. What goes inside the dress is very labor intensive," says Greco of Adrienne's.
