Knit Wedding Dress

You know how in Hollywood movies boy meets girl (or girl meets boy), and they like to make each other laugh? They go on dates, then they kiss and soon after they are the happy couple everybody is jealous of.

A couple of months later, when the butterflies in their stomachs have fallen asleep, they fight. She cries and tells him he’s not the man she fell in love with. In return, he tells her she’s a spoiled brat. One of them leaves in a hurry because of *insert whatever first world problem reason* and they split. Or, as Ross would say, they are on a break.

But wait, things are about to change! Hollywood taught us that at this point something major happens, a national tragedy* hits and they realize they do, in fact, want to spend their life together?! (*how come natural disasters always target the USA?!)

That’s usually when the guy in the movie goes through some epic adventure involving the police, national security, and Italian mafia. When he’s back, barely alive, he decides to propose in the most ostentatious way. She pretends she’s still madly in love with him and forgets why they fought in the first place. Love is in the air, Kenny G is cashing in a check for another cheesy scene.

She goes on to become a bridezilla, he goes to Las Vegas to get drunk with his friends and makes up with a monkey. But all’s well because the 2 lovebirds do get married, living happily ever after.

This sounds familiar, right? I’m sure this happened to everybody, said no sane person who lives in the real world.

Love thy life …

I know it all too well because it’s exactly how things didn’t happen in our life.

Our life is pretty boring, and I love that about us. I’m happy living a satisfactory and boring life, with a drama queen of a cat. She’s the salt and pepper in our life (for now) and adds more drama than we need on a daily basis. Boring is good should be the next tagline sold by all those lifestyle coaches who promise to change your life if you buy their books and take their expensive courses.

It’s time to settle down …

One summer morning we decided it’s time to move further with our lives. Let’s do something we’ve not done before: get married. And that’s how we embarked on the journey to build a young family, doing things our way, regardless of social pressure.


He asked, I blinked as I was dumb with surprise, then I said yes. I’m terrible at acting dramatic and I’m not that much of an excited enthusiast monkey either. And, to be honest, at first, I thought he was making a joke. Yes, we have that kind of humor.

Knitting my own dress

We’re really not keen on keeping up with the modern wedding madness that seems to envelop every woman as soon she gets the engagement ring on her finger.

I’m afraid of the bridezilla syndrome. Yes, that is a real thing and no, the treatment is not the wedding itself. Because in most cases, the bridezilla syndrome turns into mommyhood syndrome. And once the kid is old enough to date, that turns into the Not-Good-Enough-For-My-Kid syndrome.

In order to keep my own sanity (and also because I have too much yarn in my stash), I thought I’d be better of if I were to knit my own dress. Because:

  1. knitting makes me happy
  2. knitting calms my anxious mind and I can knit while I listen to books
  3. I don’t fancy spending $$$ on a dress I’m only gonna wear once
  4. I want to leave something behind for my kids (if I’ll have any)
  5. I hate shopping! especially shopping for wedding dresses. For me, it would be a total nightmare.

This is why in 2020, I’ve enrolled in the biggest yarn-related adventure ever: knitting my own dress for our wedding ceremony.

knitting dress for wedding, backside view

I love the contiguous-set-in sleeve technique which I’ve learned and used when I knitted my 32nd birthday dress, Ash. Which is why I decided to use it to make my special dress.

I’m using a lace yarn, Alize Forever Simli in white (this yarn shines), some Flavia by Romanofir turquoise yarn and Alize Forever white (this one doesn’t shine). I started with 3.25 mm needles for the shoulders then moved to 3.5 mm needles when I joined the shoulders.

While knitting this dress I listened to:

Knit wedding dress: slow, but steady progress

As soon as I’ve joined the two sides of the shoulders I realized I don’t want this dress to be too tight on my body. As the skirt part will add more weight to the whole dress and I’m not really a fan of stretched out tight stitches. So I’ve increased evenly across the chest, to make the whole body part more fluid, wider than my own size.

I’m enjoying the process more than I thought I would. Not because I am knitting my dress for the wedding, but because the project is fun and I’m improvising as I’m working on it.

There’s something liberating in not following patterns. In making things just because you like to make things that are useful.

Right now, the dress is exactly how I envisioned it. I have still a long way to go and only a couple of months to finish it. But I’m confident it will look great.
Worst-case scenario I’ll sew a skirt made of tulle and be done with it.

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