World Record for Fastest Wedding Gown Creation by One Person

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This HAS to be a World Record
for the Fastest Wedding Gown Creation by one Person

It was Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, 1985. I had worked very hard that week, some days even overnight, in order that we would finish everything for the Easter holiday.

Since we always close on the day before a holiday the only reason I was at my shop on that Saturday morning at 10 o’clock was to meet two customers that had not been able to pick up their orders the day before, and they needed them for Easter.

One customer picked up on time, but the other was late, so when the phone rang at about 12 minutes after 10 even though we were not open for business, and since I didn’t have an answering machine at that time, I answered thinking it was my customer letting me know when she’d get here. IT WAS NOT.

On the other side of the line was a very distraught bride. In a quivering voice she told me, “I picked up my wedding dress from my seamstress last night at 8:00, it doesn’t fit, and she won’t answer her door or her phone.”

To which I replied “I’m sorry the shop is closed, I just came in to deliver something to a customer, but we aren’t working today.”

The girl started to cry and said “Somebody told me if anybody could fix this dress it would be you. Can you PLEASE look at it, maybe you can fix it?”

Custom designs by Danese Creations

That was not what I wanted to hear. All I wanted was to go back home and go to sleep as I hadn’t slept all week. Then I remembered, Dear Lord, It’s Holy Week, I’m supposed to do good deeds, so I told the girl, “Ok, bring in the dress—but I’m not promising anything.”

When the girl arrived I looked at the dress and I said put it on. OH MY GOD! It was so awful, and this is an understatement. Let me explain.

In those days there weren’t large size patterns at the fabric stores, there was however, maybe one Size 16 shirt-dress pattern available and I recognized that that's what this was, some awful attempt to use that Size 16 shirt-dress pattern to make a wedding dress. The girl told me that she had asked her seamstress to make her a dropped waist, sweetheart neckline, puffy sleeve, full length wedding gown.

Custom designs by Danese Creations

What she got was not that. MY assumption is that the seamstress had taken this particular pattern that had a jewel neckline and had cut a small “v” which made the neckline look ridiculous on this tall, heavy-set girl.

The shirt-dress pattern had a straight cut waistline to which her seamstress extended the fabric from the waist into a point in front, attempting to make it a dropped waist, but she didn’t take out the amount added to the blouse off the waistline in the skirt.

The skirt was a gathered waist and she proceeded to attach the straight cut skirt onto the pointed bodice and this created a big bubble in front of the skirt, where you NEVER would like to have a bubble.

The sleeve was a fitted, short, set-in sleeve, like a t-shirt sleeve, but just a little longer.

To this sleeve she added fabric to the top of the sleeve but didn’t add any to the sides. This gave the bride a fitted sleeve with the most ridiculous pouf of fabric sticking straight up at the shoulder.

Her seamstress had also taken different pieces of lace that didn’t match and attached them to the sleeve and the neckline, and it looked awful, just awful.

I asked “Didn’t you try this dress on”? She said that the seamstress had her try on the top with no sleeves and the skirt was not yet attached to the top—that’s how the seamstress fooled this girl into thinking everything was ok.

I told this poor bride I couldn’t fix her dress—and I can fix anything&mdash but there was simply no way I could fix this thing.

She started crying and said “My family came in from Ohio and I’m going to have to cancel my wedding”. She proceeded to cry and tell me that her maid of honor was a little thing and looks good in anything she puts on, but that she would have nothing to wear.

In those days large size dresses were not readily available in the bridal shops. I knew this girl was not going to find a ready-to-wear gown.

Even though all I wanted to do was to go home and rest I said “OK, I can’t fix your dress, but I can make you a new one,” and then she looked at me in disbelief, and looked as if she was going to think about it. This was 3 hours before her wedding, she didn't have a wedding dress to wear, I'm dead on my feet after working I don’t know how many overnights in a row and she wants to think about it?!

I said “you have to make up your mind RIGHT NOW, you have to be here to try it on when I call you, and you have to pay for it RIGHT NOW.” She did.

This girl didn’t know me, someone had told her I could fix her dress, but I couldn’t. Instead I was telling her that in a very short period of time I would make her a new one.

Custom designs by Danese Creations

The thing is I had NEVER done a wedding dress in that short period of time, but I knew I was fast and I obviously believed I could do it and so did she.

After I measured her, she said she had to go and get her hair done. I told her that even if her hair was mid-way done when I called, she would have to leave and come back and try on the dress. She said ok and gave me the phone # to the hair salon. (Remember that in 1985, cell phones weren’t as common as they are now).

Luckily I always keep fabric in the shop, so I had enough white taffeta to make the gown.

I was in such a rush to get this dress done that I didn’t even take time to lock the front door. The “closed” sign was on but the door was unlocked and my usual Saturday customers never looked at the sign, so they started coming in.

Custom designs by Danese Creations

I was cutting, bending over my table, I wouldn’t even stop cutting or even raise my head to greet the person that came in.

I would yell out “I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF YOU, PLEASE COME BACK. LEAVE YOUR STUFF OR TAKE IT, WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO. I HAVE TO FINISH THIS WEDDING DRESS FOR 2:00 O’CLOCK.” It was now almost noon.

Before I took the time to lock the door, three or four such customers came in. Some of them left their stuff, some of them didn’t, but ALL of them, even though they were my Saturday people and they never came in on weekdays, were at my shop on Monday. They all wanted to know the outcome of the wedding gown and why had I waited so long to make the dress.

I cut the dress, sewed it, called the bride to try it on, and
she came over with her hair in curlers, and was going to go back to get her hair finished.

She tried on the dress with only one sleeve on—I didn’t want to have to take off two sleeves in case I needed to alter the shoulders. I did the minor alterations that are customary, hem and such, and told her to pick it up on the way to the wedding. I had it ready in 2 hours and 50 minutes. She had herself a sweetheart neckline, dropped waist, big puffy sleeves, fully lined, beautifully pressed, full length wedding gown.

As I was waiting for her to pick it up I saw a string of pearls, the kind you buy by the yard, and I sewed them to the neckline to embellish it. She loved it and made it to the wedding with time to spare.

I was never so thankful for my mother! Her name is Maria, oh! that woman is fast. When I was young and we worked together, my mother and I would be sitting at our sewing machines at the same time, each one of us with a dress that we had cut and had started to sew, and she would say to me “I’ll race you”.

And there would be times that I would beat her, but then she’d look at my sewing, and if it wasn't done right, she'd say, "No, mija, no, you can’t just be fast, you have to do it perfect."

Little did I know that all those races with my Mom were preparing me for the day that the Good Lord would send me the biggest challenge of my life on the day before we would celebrate his Resurrection.

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