Vintage Lace Mermaid Wedding Dress with Detachable Sleeves

01The sketch

It all started with a sketch

Ciaran ordered a sketch first, and only then the gown itself.

Hand-drawn sketch of Ciaran's vintage lace mermaid wedding dress, front and back, with off-the-shoulder ruffles, lace sleeves and a tiered train

It's one of the most detailed sketches I've ever made, and it had to be: we needed it to calculate the exact amount of materials. The mood was something like vintage wedding gowns and Lana Del Rey's style.

02The request

A vintage reference

Ciaran sent me a reference of a vintage-style gown and asked me to adapt it a little: add detachable sleeves, change the front neckline and add draping.

A mermaid silhouette with a long train
A corset with a point at the front and a basque waist, hand-embroidered with pearls
A "cat-eye" neckline on the corset, finished with lace draping
Detachable lace sleeves
Five different kinds of lace!

03The challenge

The train that misbehaved

The project was very complex because of the many different details, the variety of materials and the complicated construction of the skirt. Especially the train!

For it, we made a large separate pattern mock-up to calculate how much lace the full, fluffy "tail" would need, because the lace was sewn onto the train in rows, with the lace strips overlapping each other. On top of that, the train widened toward the bottom, was rounded, and generally behaved terribly! 😜
In total, the train took about 25 meters of wide lace trim.

A hand holding beaded lace trim over pleated tulle, with the sketch in the background

Close-up of the train's overlapping lace and tulle ruffles

To make the train's ruffles full, we made an underlay from strips of crinkled tulle with a lace edge.

Strip of pleated tulle with a fine lace edge for the train underlay

Two strips of pleated tulle with lace edges

Wide beaded lace trim with ruffled tulle edges

A kraft paper mock-up of the mermaid gown with sleeves on a dress form, front and back

Before cutting the lace

A gown made of paper

So as not to get the order of very expensive fabrics wrong, we made a mock-up of the gown out of kraft paper, drew the markings on it, recalculated everything once more, and bought exactly the amount of lace we needed.

04The process

Everything, all at once

We worked on every stage at the same time (back then I still took orders less than six months before the wedding. Crazy! 😅).

We had to finish all the parts of the gown at once, and then put them together.

The semi-sheer lace corset on a dress form, front view

The lace corset on a dress form, back view

05The laces

Five kinds of lace

We sewed a semi-sheer lace corset with visible boning, from a dense corded guipure, the first lace.

Separately, we made the sleeves with a point at the wrist, the fitted upper part of the skirt, and a very complex lower part made of pleated tulle and a heavy embroidered lace, the second lace.

Lace corset, fitted upper skirt and a detachable lace sleeve on a dress form

Back of the lace corset and fitted skirt, with the sleeve

I also bought a richly embroidered lace trim, the third lace, to decorate the top of the corset and to create an elegant basque flowing out from the seam where the corset meets the skirt, plus one more, different lace for the same basque. The fifth lace went on the front of the skirt, at the bottom.

Heavy embroidered lace with a scalloped edge

The gown had to be unusual and full of variety, and I didn't hold back on buying all kinds of different laces, so that together they would create a stunning effect.