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My Wedding Evening Gown

by Claire Chanelle

evening wedding dress (21 of 30)

I am so excited to finally share my wedding dresses with you. Sorry for the wait. I hope this inspires any of you dreaming of your wedding day or for those that are actually planning the big day. Most of all I want to show you that you don’t have to spend thousands on a wedding dress. I had two dress and both were my dream dresses, heavily beaded and beautiful fabrics. I have so many stories to share with you and I will definitely be filming a talk on Youtube because I had so much D R A M A with this dress and my wedding day. If I didn’t have photos to back up my stories you wouldn’t believe me.

When I tell you how much I spent on my wedding dress I think your mouth will be wide open. Not because I spent a lot, it’s quite the opposite. But I got creative, I went to great length and shopped smart. I will share everything with you so you can do the same. This article is about the evening dress and my next article will tell you all about the money I spent.

Okay THE DRESS…

I am going to start off with my evening dress. I am actually a little against evening dresses, because you only wear your wedding dress once so why take it off so quickly? I wanted to be in my dress all day and night. However due to how little my actual dress cost I thought let me look into the idea. Once I found my dress (fabric) I realised it might be too heavy to wear all night so I wanted a back up to wear in the evening. Looking back on the photos I do sometimes wish I had kept my main dress on all night. BUT and there was a huge but, it was kinda impossible, my pearl dresses was beaded from top to toe so it was so so so heavy. I was in the heat as well and at one point I thought I was going to faint because it was that heavy. I was relieved that I had my second dress because it was really light and comfortable. It was actually a lot more loose fitting than I wanted but I will explain that later.

I don’t know where to start. I have so much to tell you so a video will be happening for sure. I actually show you my two wedding gowns in my dressing room YouTube video, you will see this next weekend.

I knew from the start I wanted a beaded dress, 1920s inspired but not like a fancy dress and I wanted tight fitting. I will show you all the dresses I tried on in my main wedding dress post. I was really stressed because beaded dresses are the most expensive ones, not only were they over my budget they were like fives times over my budget. I wanted fully beaded, not crystals or sequins here and there; I wanted head to toe beading. I couldn’t find anything under 12k for what I wanted; even if I had that kind of money I really don’t think I could or would spend that on a dress for one day (half a day.) With that said I am someone that has to have what I set out to have and by that I mean I will do what ever it takes within legal and moral reasoning of course. I wasn’t prepared to settle on my wedding dress but what the hell was I going to do?? Some of the dresses I tried on for £10k plus were not even exactly what I wanted so I was so worried. I nearly settled for a lace dress with no beaded and was stunning but it just wasn’t what I dreamed off. I will share this dress with you in the next article.

I found some stunning dresses in Austrlia, everything I wanted was from Australia so I considered flying there but it wasn’t realistic; too far and too expensive. It was just too risky to order from Australia. However if my “homemade” dress didn’t work out I would have for sure ordered from either Anna Campbell or Jane Hill Bridal. They were both really helpful and I think it would have turned out great. I do recommended these two brands if you like my style of wedding dress. The prices were reasonable and their designs were the best I came across. I very nearly ordered one from both brands. I will dedicate another post just for the styles and things I didn’t choose but they are great options. I will tell you the exact styles I nearly ordered and then I will tell you why they were not for me.

The first item I bought for my wedding was my BO & Luca head piece. The idea came from “The Never Ending Story” film. If you are an 80s child you will know and no doubt love this film. I wanted to look like that princess! True to my mums style she said to me “let’s find the costume designer of that film” My mum always makes me believe I can do anything so I thought okay I am gonna find her. Within ten minutes were hunted her down and she replied to me right away. It was so exciting. The only reason why I didn’t go ahead with it is because the lady wanted way too much money to do it and she was quite flakey about finding the components and then at a closer look I thought maybe I shouldn’t dress exactly like a princess from a kids film and I will find something similar. Conclusion the head piece was inspired by “The Never Ending Story” princess and my 1920s theme.

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After days or searching (I went on a head piece binge search) I came across a website that head exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t want a full on 1920s band and look fancy dress. I wanted something slightly boho and slightly 1920s but at the same time bridal. When I found this head piece I bought it straight away, it was exactly what I was looking for. I had no idea what my dress would be at this point but I knew it would fit with this head piece. It actually didn’t suit my main wedding dress but it did fit perfectly for the evening and it was also a nice evening touch. I recommend buying something for the evening to turn your dress from day to night. Maybe you don’t want  ahead piece but you could change your shoes, add a belt; something like that.

The second item I bought was my Balmain lace booties. Again really weird shoe choice generic cialis 20mg online because they are booties and totally strange buying shoes before a dress and my mum wasn’t happy but I just knew it would all work out. They actually ended up not fitting my wedding dress but they matched my evening dress perfectly. I mean it was totally like I had bought the dress then the shoes right? You could see the booties through the lace and lace patterns matched the lace panels on my dress. I will show you more photos of my shoes in the next article. You can see them below and you can also see my main wedding day shoes (the middle beige CHANEL) with “I do” on the sole. I bought the labels from here. This was also my “something blue.” I wanted to wear heels that were not too high and the obvious choice for me was of course CHANEL and Balmain. 

There were so many other shoes I wanted and I will list them all in the article of “what I nearly bought.”

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When you see both of my dresses you will probably notice that it wasn’t a design created by me. I have never said I designed this dress I just made it and bought all the fabric myself. My dresses were mixture of couture gowns (mainly Jaton Couture) I had found on line. These dresses were £25k+ so yes my dresses were kinda dupes dress, but there were lots of personal touches for sure. At the end of the day I wanted a dress I could never ever afford so it as a guide to inspire mine. Mine was more covered up and more me so it worked out perfectly. I had a budget for my dress and veil. My dad gave me the budget and I couldn’t really afford to add any extra money. I also thought I didn’t want to go mad and that was more than enough. I sourced the fabric in Israel; I found the beads, the lace fabric, the nude fabric and then put it all together myself and with the help of FRANCESCA COUTURE. I couldn’t have made the dress without them. I will show you more photos of the fabric and how we put it all together but it will have to be another article.

I would love you to guess how much this evening dress cost me? Bare in mind the lace fabric, nude fabric and seamstress? I will reveal the price in my main wedding dress article. This post is all about why I chose this style and what inspired me. The other post will be about costs, the help I had and the timing. So have a guess, how much do you think this dress was? You can ignore the head piece, shoes and jacket.

I decided to fly to Israel because I loved the gowns there. They seemed couture but less expensive. I initially went to try on two gowns and then came across a fabric market! I know I keep saying “I will reveal more in the next article” but I really don’t want to over whelm you in just one post. The story is hilarious.

My jacket was the dream bridal jacket. I found it on Pinterest two years ago and had no idea where it was from. After two years of hunting it down I found it here. I was so happy I finally found it after two years of looking. My happiness soon ended when Talluah got hold of the jacket and chewed the pearls off. I was in shock when I found it because Tallulah has never done anything naughty her whole life. I was so upset. I searched for months after trying to replace it, I found few tops but never found the jacket. I wore one of the tops here at Paris fashion week. A couple of weeks before my wedding I found it again, so I re bought it. Everyone knew to keep the jacket away from her but the day after my wedding she got hold of the second jacket and chewed it again! Can you believe she chewed it twice! This time it wasn’t at bad and I managed to repair it. Basically Tallulah has a thing for pearls just like me. I can only imagine what she would do if she got hold of my wedding dress. I also had a lace jacket made by Fran which I will share with you later. 

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In the evening I change my second pair of shoes and swore my NIKE airmax sneakers. This was the best planning ever because I danced all night and they were so comfy. NIKE sent me them as a gift, I was so grateful, they are so special to me because they say MR Maz and Mrs Maz on the back. My new surname is Mazurek. NIKE even made a pair for Paris. I change the laces to white ribbon to make them more bridal. I think all brides should have NIKE ID sneakers, it was amazing. Thanks Nike. Click here to order you own pair.

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Below you can see photos of my evening look. I had to re take these photo at my friends chateaux because I didn’t get one single photo at the actually wedding. Actually I have the dancing ones which I have included at the bottom but no close ups. I did a special dance with my dad. Paris can not dance so we couldn’t plan a dance. I decided to do one with my dad. We did the first half slow then it went into a crazy dance with a remix of 5o cent and the Jackson five. My first dance was awkward for me because I have a dad and a step dad. My biological dad walked me down the isle and did the father of the bride speech and my step dad did the father and daughter dance and sang me a song in the evening. If you have the same problem maybe you an do what I did and share the roles?

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I hope this wedding posts gives you inspiration to create you own wedding gown and not too feel to pressured to spend lots of money. As soon as I am back from America I will get all the other wedding articles written and published. If you want to ask anything now to ensure I include it in the next article, just leave me a comment below and I will make sure I answer all your enquires.

Thanks again to our family friends Claire, Laure, Christine and Jean Noel for letting me take over their castle of the day 🙂

CC xx

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4 comments

toyah April 3, 2016 - 7:06 pm

Hi Claire

Love your dress, can’t wait to see the rest of your photos!!!

Im getting married in June and really want a second wedding dress, could you recommend anywhere i could get one from for around £500?

xx

Reply
Vron April 3, 2016 - 8:15 pm

Hi Claire,

What a lovely post, the pictures look amazing! Can’t wait for the next post …

Reply
Abby April 4, 2016 - 12:28 pm

Absolutely stunning! Those Chanel shoes are so beautiful

Dying to see the main dress and the rest of the pics! xx

Reply
Adele April 5, 2016 - 12:06 pm

Absolutely stunning. Adore the 1920s theme.
Hugs Adele xoxo

Reply

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