This is how your handmade wedding dress comes to life

Indiebride London dresses are proudly handmade in our London studio. This is expensive, but ensures not only that we know exactly who made your dress and that their working conditions and pay are fair, but also that we don't have to deal with delays caused by a factory in another country and that we have complete control over the quality of our gowns. It takes hours and hours to handcraft a dress and even longer to tailor it to someone. The magic begins the moment you enter our showroom and once you place an order for your handmade wedding dress, we get to work. 

Fabrics and patterns prepared

The first thing that happens is that the fabrics for your wedding dress are ordered. Before we do anything else, we steam them to prepare them for cutting. Certain natural fibres, like silk, shrink when wet or heated, thus it must be pre-shrunk before cutting. If you ordered a made-to-measure or customised dress, we will adjust the standard size patterns to your measurements or style preferences. Sometimes an entirely new pattern is required. If you chose a standard style and size dress, we will cut the pieces using a standard size pattern.

Fabrics cut

After the fabrics and patterns have been prepared, we cut the pieces for your dress which has a main fabric or fabrics, and a lining or a slip. The fabrics are laid on the cutting table making sure that the grain line is straight. Lace needs additional attention as we need to make sure that the pattern of the lace either matches or aligns neatly in the seams of the dress and is centered. 

Most exciting part

Once all the pieces of the main fabrics and the linings are cut out, they are prepared for sewing. Interlining is attached to the necklines and sometimes armholes as well. Stay stitches are added to some lace pieces and mountings to others. Then it’s time for the most exciting part. Every seam is meticulously sewn, under stitches are made, and seams and details are pressed or steamed in between different phases of work. The zip is added last, and the entire dress is steamed once again before being placed in a garment bag to await the fitting. It's fascinating to watch a handmade wedding dress take shape right in front of your eyes!

Fittings, alterations and completion

Your dress is first made fitting-ready. This means that it will be missing all the finishing touches as we first need to determine whether and how the dress has to be altered to fit you perfectly. There are usually 1-3 fittings needed to achieve this. In between fittings we carefully alter and tweak the dress to better the fit until we reach the desired outcome. After the final fitting we will add all the finishing touches; bind the armholes and the zip, turn the hem, hand stitch in loops and buttons, hooks and eyes, hand stitch the zip edges in place, hand stitch press buttons, necklines and so on.. 

The process of hand crafting a wedding dress is time-consuming and requires a great deal of artistic and creative talent and know-how.I spent 5 years studying fashion in Finland and Italy, refining my skills in dressmaking, design, and pattern cutting. Except for pattern grading, I do everything myself because I love this art so much. The look on a bride's face when she first tries on her handmade wedding dress is priceless!

Miina

xx