Design Tale: How I curated My Wedding Outfit & Look!

April 13, 2017

So, I don’t know where to start from. I’m so super excited even while thinking about this post that I can’t find words to start with. The post is about one of the special moments in my life – being a bride! 😀

Being a fashion enthusiast & knowing how to design and stitch, it’s quite natural that I’d love to curate my own wedding outfit. The designs, styles had been there in my head – almost always. Sometimes, I’d think – let me just make (design & stitch) the outfit & keep it till the wedding day comes because I’d have a lot of time to make it. But then – of course – various parameters of size, trends, hair length/quality and many more of them come object the previous thought.

When my wedding day was decided, all of us had barely 1.5 months to prepare for everything. Be it – venue, invitations, decorations, and hundreds of things. Even though both the families wanted a simple wedding – 1.5 months is still a short time to figure out everything. Undoubtedly, I had to start with the wedding outfit – my husband told me that he’d get his outfit once I’ve finalized mine so that I don’t have any restriction of color, style etc. *Cuteness Overload*.

1. Curating the Outfit (Wedding Lehenga): Considering the time crunch initially, I opted to buy it from the market. Since I really wanted a simple outfit, getting a lavish designer outfit was out of the picture. Hence, curating the outfit became even more difficult. Well, try explaining what you want to Chandni Chowk or Karol Bagh sales guys at Lehenga special outlets. When I’d go tell them – I’m looking for lehenga for my wedding, they immediately would start showing you *weighing-at-least-30kg-even-heavy-to-pick* lehengas. You tell them – you want lighter ones & they’d tell you “Madam, aap dulhan ho – aap hi halka pehenoge” (Translation: Ma’am, you’re a bride. Even you will wear a very light outfit?!!)

Well, my thought was clear – heavy is not always good-looking or a good-feel outfit. I wanted to dance, run & have fun in my wedding outfit & not just *go-keep-picking-it-up-every-time-you-move-out-of-your-chair* outfit. Plus, it was a pool-side daytime wedding. I didn’t want to over-do.

So, in almost couple of hours, I changed my strategy. I’d go & tell that I have to attend a friend’s wedding & want a simple lehenga with few attributes that I had in mind.

Trust me, I learnt after 2-3 hours of walking on my feet in the market & fighting with the effort of making salesmen/women understand – that – big shops would not necessarily be my go-to options. So, I went to a regular lehenga store & looked for options.

Since, the blouse could be stitched the way I wanted, I looked primarily for good skirt options (Just the bottom).

Well, I found one – with minimalistic & elegant thread embroidery with no sequin/heavy work. Even the dupatta was very light to hold. *I immediately thought of – wow – I can dance in this pretty easily :D*

So, after that – it was the time to get the blouse styled. I really really wanted to design the entire outfit – that couldn’t happen completely but of course, there was something really important that I could contribute to – so I did. 🙂

Bringing cold shoulder to ethnics is something that I thought would look cool so, check on that. Also, I wanted an extra tier on my skirt so I thought of attaching the sheer fabric along the waistline of the blouse to come over the skirt. This way it would be a tiered lehenga too.

2. Curating the Makeup & Hair look: Well, I had a similar fight even with the makeup artists. Finding a makeup artist is easy but finding the one that’d fit your thoughts is not easy. Making them understand that I don’t want too much makeup specially when it’s a day wedding was not so easy. Also, I wanted loose hair. They won’t believe it! They would say: “You’re the bride!!!!” So what?

Can the bride be not simple? Is it really important to overdo just to be the bride?

Finally, after so many calls, Swati came to the rescue 🙂

She understood exactly what I wanted & assured that makeup will be the way I wanted – natural and simple.

3. Curating the Jewellery: Generally, in India – we have those – already in place – bridal wedding jewellery sets that have everything matching from the choker to the bracelets. Also, that’s generally taken on rental basis as it’s very heavy & not-to-be-worn again, almost never. But, of course, I wanted something different.

I wanted to buy & keep the jewellery. The necklace & earrings set were bought from a different place, the (matha patti) hair accessory from a different one, the longer necklace from a different one – it’s actually a different set with pair of earrings, hathphool (hand accessory) from a different place; put together 🙂

4. Curating the Mehendi (Henna) Design: Well, this was also very tricky for me. Wanted a scattered design on the hands & as well as on the feet so requested the artist to make assembled design patches. Thank God he took the directions pretty well 😀

So, finally – of all the efforts for wedding outfit & look – here’s the result:

How would you style yourself for your own wedding? Would you design & curate your wedding outfit. Share with me 🙂

New posts on my other outfits from the wedding functions will be up soon! 😀

Lots of love ❤

Himanshi

Makeup & Hair: Swati Chaudhary

Photography: Tarun Chawla Photography