Recycled wedding dress: A Donnelly-designed christening gown
Recycled wedding dress: A Donnelly-designed christening gown
Isabel Donnelly can’t count the number of wedding dresses she’s made. Hundreds, maybe thousands in her 25 years as a seamstress fitting and altering gowns and other men’s and women’s apparel. After working for a variety of stores, including a bridal shop, five years ago she decided to go solo and opened Isabel’s Alterations at her home in Ellicott City.
“I love to make brides happy,” says Donnelly, who also alters formal gowns for bridesmaids, mothers-of-the-bride and, even, recently, for entrants to the Miss Maryland pageant.
Donnelly’s specialty is restyling wedding gowns – particularly those once worn by a family member – that may retain sentimental value, but need alterations and updates. She adds lace, beads and flowers. She removes sleeves and straps to update the gowns.
One client brought in her great-great-grandmother’s dress, a 110-year-old creation made almost entirely of lace, some of it badly frayed. Along with repairing the lace by hand, Donnelly lopped off the sleeves and the high neckline of the fragile gown.
Another client purchased her gown in a bridal resale shop, not to save money but because she liked the design. Unfortunately, the dress didn’t reach the floor, so Donnelly added a lace border, along with a flowing train.
More than one bride has arrived with her mother’s gown, carefully cleaned and preserved – only to open the box and discover a long-ago stain. “There’s no way to get that spot out either,” says Donnelly, describing one of many challenges in dealing with fragile fabrics. She’s solved the problem in some cases by stitching handmade flowers over the spot.
And then there’s the question of sizing. It’s easy enough to take in a dress. But if it’s the opposite, finding material to match the original in order to create more room is nearly impossible, Donnelly says. Solutions include switching a zipper or buttons from the back to corset-style laces, adding several inches of leeway.
Depending on the complexity of the job, fees for renovating a wedding gown are usually $500 to $800.
And if a bride wants to save her daughter or granddaughter the anxiety of having to deal with altering the dress down the road, Donnelly has a solution for that too: One service she provides is transforming wedding dresses into Christening gowns (see photo).
For details, visit her website, www.isabeldonnelly.com.
