Wedding dress help

I didn't make my own wedding dress, but my mother-in-law made my two flower girl dresses. Sh made her sister's wedding dress about 20 years ago as well She has been sewing for 40+ years and she had a difficult time. She said making formal wear is much harder than just regular clothes. When we went shopping she had to make sure we bought certain types of fabric rather than ones I thought just looked good because certain fabrics are easier to work with. It was a lot of additional stress because she was having difficult and the dresses weren't 100% done and altered until the night before the wedding. I would only ever consider making a wedding dress if I had lots of experience with sewing especially formal wear and I knew what fabrics to use, but even then I don't think I would because of the time it would take. I also don't know how you would properly alter it if any alternations would need to be done after you finish because you have to be in the dress in order to pin for the alternations.

I also know someone else who insisted on making.her own wedding dress and the morning of the wedding it still wasn't done. She ended up wearing the bottom half of the dress as a skirt and a white men's dress shirt as the top. With everything else she simply didn't have time to finish the dress and wouldn't let anyone else help.

I agree with PP—it’s a fine idea if you have tons of sewing experience, but probably a bad idea if it’s just a hobby of yours. My cousin made her own wedding dress, all 6 of the bridesmaid dresses, and sashes for the flower girls for her wedding; however, she’s worked in theater costume departments for years and years and already sews most of her own clothes, so it wasn’t a huge challenge for her—she’s used to sewing a wide variety of clothing, in a wide variety of fabrics, styles, and sizes, in a short time frame. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who doesn’t have at least that level of experience.

You could always buy a base dress and alter it to how you want it. It's something I might be doing, but I haven't talked to a seamstress yet to see if my design ideas are doable. The plan is the seamstress will also tailor the fit to me as well because as PPs said, wedding dress sewing is a whole nother game.