A growing wedding trend has emerged from the depths of closets, attics and long-forgotten storage spaces.
New brides, including many locally, are turning their mothers’ wedding gowns into new frocks that contain as many memories as they do appliques, sequins and pearls.
Seamstress Sharon Perkins, who tailors about 400 wedding dresses a year, said she’s been seeing the trend grow for two years now. Women visit her sewing studio at Sharon’s Sewing in Fairmount with their moms and moms’ dresses, which can date back decades. The bride tries on Mom’s dress, then brainstorms how to make it new again.
The most common trend is to make a short cocktail or party dress the bride will wear to her rehearsal dinner, the reception or bridal shower. Otherwise, many brides are keeping lots of the original style — including poofy sleeves, butt bows and piles of sparkly details that were popular among ’80s and ’90s brides.
“Some of the ’90s dresses are incredibly elaborate,” Perkins said. “Huge puffy sleeves, pearls everywhere, tons of embellishments.”
The good news is they give her a lot to work with.
Perkins, who has been sewing since she was a kid, said brides are getting creative with what they want to make from Mom’s dress. And the long trains that were a popular feature for many years allow for myriad options because there’s so much fabric.
She’s made robes for brides to wear while they get ready on their wedding day. She even made a flower girl dress from a bridal gown for a woman who was remarrying after her first husband, the little girl’s father, died years earlier.
It’s important the original dress be in good condition, Perkins said, noting some wedding dress fabrics and materials can grow brittle and break down over too many years. And if a bride has an idea or inspiration for what she wants, bringing photos to the appointment can be a big help.
Sometimes the creations are a surprise for the bride or her mom. Either way, the trend is often a sentimental, emotional part of the celebration.
Perkins said she enjoys hearing the stories behind the pieces she works on.
“People really open up to you. I’m like a hairdresser. People tell me everything,” she said. “I enjoy my job.”
Alexis Fietta had only seen her mother’s dress in pictures from her parents’ 1997 wedding. She asked her mom to pull out the dress last fall, and both were thrilled when it fit Alexis, 27, perfectly. That’s when she asked her mom if she could use it to make something for her own wedding.
“She seemed excited to see it again and to see me wearing it,” Alexis said. “I’m her only daughter so she said yes, absolutely, do whatever you want with it.”
Alexis and her mom, Megan, met with Perkins to talk about what alterations they wanted. The end result is an above-the-knee party dress that kept all the details from the waist up, including five satin, pearl-adorned rosettes in the back.
Perkins removed the lacy, sparkly appliqué trim from the bottom of Megan’s dress and reapplied it to the hem of the new one, which helps the dresses look alike.
Alexis grew up in Jordan, but she and her fiancé spent the last two years in Nashville where she works as a pediatric ICU nurse. She will return for a final fitting of her rehearsal dinner dress in June before getting married at Emerson Park in Auburn in August.
Alexis said the money she’s spending to remake her mother’s dress is about what she would’ve spent on a new rehearsal dinner dress.
Perkins said similar alterations and sewing start at $100 and can go up depending on the complexity of the job. Removing the edge of Megan’s dress and then reapplying it to her daughter’s was very time-consuming, she said. The receipt on the dress hanging in Perkins’ shop read $385, plus tax.
The new-old dress is just one of the reasons Alexis said she is very excited for her wedding later this summer.
“I know with weddings we do a lot of things with the father of the bride and then the mother of the groom has a dance with her son,” she said. “This was a good way for me to be able to honor my mom throughout the process with all that she’s been helping me with for this wedding.”