Wedding dress

Yesterday after Beverly's morning crochet group, Lee and I went to a local thrift store just to look around.  I found a light blue skirt and jacket to wear to a wedding.  In a back corner I also found this lovely oldish wedding dress.  I believe it is from the 1980's from the style and abount of dust.  The satin has yellowed very beautifully.  You can't easily see that there is a sheer fabric with lace edging over the dress.  I had started looking for a wedding or bride's maid dress to alter for a ongoing magazine contest.  My idea was to take an ugly wedding dress and torch the outer skirt leaving the underskirt in tact and punk it all.  But the dresses I found were to ugly to believe.  So that idea got shelved and yesterday I found this dress but it is to beautiful to burn.  So I am going to give it a second chance as a wedding dress.  The bodice has a rather common design of machine made lace, so I though of encrusting it in beaded embroidery and I'm toying with adding color.  Why should Queen Victoria still set the trend in wedding dresses?  Why not some color or goldwork or even tiny silk roses embroidered onto the lace?  With a lot of care I am going to scan the bodice and bring it into Corel and design on the conputer before starting to embroider.  Play with color and crystals on the screen.  If someone in my family wants the dress I will take their ideas and start working immediately, so speak up!  One thing I do know is the sleeves have to go!

Partial veiw of back of dress.

Bodice on dress makers dummy from view.

Front of bodice again.

Sleeve cuff.

Back bodice.

Back bodice again.

Lower back of dress.

Back skirt.

Bottom of skirt front.

Most of dress front.

Most of dress front again.

Dress back part of train.