Bridesmaid Dresses

I've fallen off the radar for the past year as I prepared for my wedding and completed my PhD. Now I can share all the things I created for the wedding since they're not a secret anymore!

First, the most exciting and biggest project of all: the bridesmaid dresses. Since this was an 18 month project, I'll break it into smaller posts over the next few days :)

Please note: the photos shown above were assembled from our professional wedding photos.
Photo credit: Sean Marshall Lin

The Color Scheme
Our wedding was fairly traditional. We got married in a church and had the reception at a country club. I used a rainbow color scheme for my wedding. Everything--invitations, place cards, memorial candles, programs, etc. followed this color scheme, but the table linens were all white. The flowers also turned out great--the girls had white roses with gladiolus in their respective colors. Some of the colors didn't exist naturally, so I dyed silk flowers (another post to follow) to match, and the florist incorporated them in with the live white roses.

I chose the rainbow color scheme for two reasons: 1) I just love colors and couldn't imagine choosing only one, and 2) My parents had a rainbow color scheme for their wedding.


The rainbow color scheme made bridesmaid dresses much easier than they would have been otherwise because each girl had a corresponding color. I could cut one dress and not confuse it with another. In looking for inspiration for my rainbow scheme, I found a lot of rainbow weddings that had more of a hippie vibe—mismatched dresses, hair down, outdoor wedding, nontraditional decor, etc. This wasn't the look I was going for, so I followed my own gut in designing the dresses.

Designing the Dresses
I had my bridesmaids share their tastes with me before I designed the dresses from scratch and chose the fabric. Click here for my post on the dress design and fabric selection!

Assembling the Dresses
Cutting and sewing the dresses was by far the easiest part of this process. I fully lined the dresses in a light cotton with a straight skirt. Check out the dress assembly post here.

The Finishing Touches
Each dress has an invisible zipper, a pleated waistband that criss-crosses in the front, and a rolled hem. Click here to see close ups of all these details.

The Final Product
I was so happy with the final product! Here are more photos featuring the dresses from our photographer Sean Marshall Lin from our wedding day.