weddings

custom weddings: dresses, accessories and custom pieces made for weddings

  • garters,  lingerie,  official piper ewan,  weddings

    Garters Are Back

    If you’ve been following me on Instagram you know that this is garter no. 1725 and the first garter I’ve made since October 2014. I suppose I thought I was done forever, but forever is a long time, and the giant box of ribbons that has lived under my bed for over the last decade has been calling my name. I don’t want to return to what I was doing between 2008 – 2014 that led me to burn out on ribbonwork. This will be a try and see. I will mostly be stocking my (very happy) stockists some of whom have been with me since my first garters in 1998.…

  • custom,  official piper ewan,  weddings

    No Photos of the Tulle Dress I’ve Been Working On!

    I love posting on Twitter my projects in progress. For the last two weeks. my Twitter feed has been filled with posts about a tulle wedding dress restoration and alteration project that has been dominating my house. And by dominating, I mean that there is tulle EVERYWHERE. Many have followed along, and have been asking, begging for photos. Unfortunately, there are no photos. I took on this project as a favour for a friend (I have exited the wedding dress world for the time being for the most part), and because occasionally, I like a crazy challenge. The thing is, this is someone else’s wedding dress. Now, I am sure…

  • custom,  official piper ewan,  weddings

    dress, dress, dress a rambling state of my wedding season

    dress, dress, dress; it is all i can think about. mentally working out the design that my brain is not so graciously giving up in tiny pieces as the deadline approaches. she has worked her way into all of my thoughts, my dreams, my whole being until she is finished sometime in the next couple of days. i have given up trying to think about anything else; it is an exercise in futility. such is how things are when i am nearing a deadline. my mind is hard-wired to solve design problems. i have a particular outcome that i am fixated on, a particular vision that requires all the tricks…

  • custom,  weddings

    the process of a custom wedding from start to finish

    at the dawn of my eleventh wedding season i have been puzzling over the internal conflict i have been having about doing weddings. my dilemma i had best spelled out to my painter friend after someone asked me how i made my wedding work sustainable. in fact weddings feel like the least sustainable thing i do. i asked him, “what if you were commissioned to make a large several thousand dollar painting that took you six months or more to complete, and the couple put it behind them at their wedding ceremony, hung it over their table at their reception, took all of their wedding party photos in front of…

  • custom,  weddings

    wedding randomness part three

    this is the wedding of the longstockings who got married on leap day. i went to high school with the bride. we spent years together in french class. her dress is a modified version of my a-line dress (see photo below) with a higher neckline, lower hemline and is decorated with roses.

  • weddings

    wedding randomness part two

    this is a reconstruction project i did this past spring/summer. i got a call from a lady who had seen one of my skirts on someone at the grocery store. she brought me her mother’s wedding dress to restyle: it was covered in rust stains, and wasn’t the most flattering fit on her. we decided to take the sleeves off, change the neckline, lower the hem, add triangle gussets to the sides for a slightly fuller skirt and add surface decorations to cover the rust stains. i used a piece of the sleeve cuff for the headpiece (not pictured). we chose some tulle, vintage net, organza and hanah silk ribbon…

  • custom,  weddings

    wedding randomness part one

    now that it is almost the end of the year, i am going to post all the random custom projects that i have been meaning to put up. there will be a few more in the coming days. this is a wedding project that i did with my friend nancy davis. she did most of the work, but employed me to make the felt appliques that are studded with swarovski crystals. i did the tux jacket and the birds on the skirt of the dress, she made the bride’s dress. this was for a december wedding at a roadside attraction in joshua tree. a little outside of the realm of…

  • official piper ewan,  weddings

    wedding bell blues

    no, this is not a statement about my personal life. as we teeter on the edge of january, i get to try and predict what i can book myself out for the following year. i am working on my official look book and catalogue for the year, and i am trying to guess how much time i will have for custom projects; which for the most part, consist of weddings. i have been evolving my wedding policies from the get go, in a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants/learn-as-i-go sort of way. it has been these countless dresses made from scratch that have honed my design and dress making skills to their pursnickety, precise, perfect,…