If a friend designed your wedding dress...?

[emelina15]

Interested to hear from people who had a friend design their wedding dress instead of going down the boutique route. What was the process, what should I keep in mind, and if you paid for their services, how did you agree on a price?

I have a friend who is a fashion designer and she's been quite invested in my wedding dress search. I've found one I like but am not 100% certain about, and she's offered to make me all the accessories I need (veil, gloves, etc.) free of charge. But now I'm thinking, why not ask her to do the whole thing and give her the money I'd spend on that dress instead?

I think she'd probably be up for it given how proactive she's been so far, and where she is in her career. However, I obviously also don't want to push her into anything - she's a very kind person, so I need to figure out a way to ask without her feeling like she has to say yes!

Regarding style, she's quite avant-garde, which I love - but DP's family are quite traditional, so I also don't want to rock the boat too much. With that in mind, I'm also just a bit cautious of the creative process and how much she'd be willing to compromise - that's probably a conversation I need to have with her rather than MN, though.

Finally, she's definitely able to sew, but is more on the design side - I'm wondering if this is the kind of thing you would send to a professional seamstress at the end?

Have you seen samples of her work so you can see the quality? Set really clear written details on what you are expecting the final design to look like.

This has disaster written all over it. If she is that invested in your wedding you will get the dress she thinks you should wear not the dress you want. Be prepared for arguments & fallouts and the loss of your friendship.

My mum's had a friend but not close friend who was a wedding dress designer. I bought my dress sold as seen, end of line and she did some alterations which took her a couple of evenings. To design the whole thing from scratch would have been worth thousands of pounds and she'd be turning down other work. You'd have to be really close, and there's potential for a difference in "vision" - if she's working for free she might want some artistic freedom!
Also, she hasn't offered.

Sorry for not coming back to this sooner… yes, I do worry that there could be some, uh, “creative differences” - I’d like to think neither of us are the type to fall out over this, but I’m also not naive about how these things can go!

@Love51 i really like your approach with the alterations. What kinds of alterations did she make? Very curious about this.

To be clear, I was always going to pay my friend.

However, there’s been a slight development since I last posted. A family friend who works closely with seamstresses, and has commissioned wedding dresses through them before, offered to make me a dress at cost - I just need to tell her what I want. Came completely out of the blue yesterday. So that’s also something to consider… might be easier to ask first friend for help with the initial design and final alterations, but leave the bulk of the work with family friend?

@emelina15 I bought end of line, sold as seen, so she made it fit! It was originally a skirt and a bodice, she attached them together, you couldn't tell. I was 100% not going to have a veil, I had a tiara. To humour her I tried on a veil, and ended up with the longest veil I've ever seen which she said didn't actually require much making but she chose the colour / provided the material (different shades of almost white are not my forte!) I just paid for the fabric.