A Morrocan Courtyard Wedding

Meet Ange, she’s lovely. And David, I’m sure he’s lovely too, because Ange told me. I’ve delayed on writing about this bride and her dress because I hadn’t found the words, even though I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to introduce David, (even though I’ve not met him), because to an extent, he was the influence behind the dress.
On our first meeting, Ange told me all about David, his style, a certain eccentricity, and a vision of his bride that came to him in a dream, with flowers in her hair, and I knew she wanted to live the dream with David on her wedding day.

A few years ago, I spoke with a bride, and she told me about her ideas for her wedding dress - they were awesome, and I was excited to make the dress (It was going to be a blue woven silk, drop-waisted ball-gown-type affair - but then she shared her ideas with her fiance, he was disappointed, his dream was that his bride would be head to toe in ivory lace, she changed her mind to suit his tastes, and I was really sad for her, and since then it’s always made me question who the dress is for.

Ange wanted a dress for David, but I could tell without a doubt that her style was at the forefront, but with cute little touches that David would love. (David had a nightmare also that he was havingto shorten the sleeves of Ange’s wedding dress but he kept cutting it unevenly, and they got shorter and shorter - So devilishly, me and Ange created a false design which required the same to leave laying around for David to find - I wonder if he ever did!)

Ultimately, Ange’s style is very clean and chic, we made segments on the bodice, layered with different laces, and softening some of the hard lines with the scalloped edges of fine Chantilly lace, or making an organic vine with the prettiest Guipure daisy-like trim and spirals of Guipure lace.
The segment on the shoulder gave a similar look to a raglan style sleeve, which to me, is so flattering on the majority of people, this was layered in a really interesting lace, that I’m not actually sure how to describe it! From a distance it looks like loose scattered weave or flat crochet, but its actually solidly woven in it’s design. The same fabric is used for the sleeve (we originally thought that each adjoining segment would be a different lace, but we realised it would start to look too messy and instead used seams and trims to section and tie together each part!). The sleeves I think are a great length - a kind of t-shirt length which give a little informality, I think. Ange and David married at a beautiful venue - El Fenn - in Marrakech, Morocco, so a warm, informal celebration was the order of the day.

The back of the bodice has a large cut out, fastened at the back neck, and scooping out to a wide curved triangle shape, covered in a striped lace and edged in Guipure lace to match the front.

The skirt is cut in a bias Silk Crepe, with arced cut-outs on the hips, and layered with fine Chantilly lace, and again edged with a vine of Guipure appliques. The back of the skirt is split to around knee level, and a triangle of lace embroidered at the hem to the top of the split. A lace edging was added to the hem of the lining layer to peek out between layers.

There were a few challenges along the way for Ange and David to finally reach their wedding day - wedding bands stolen being one of them!! - and so it’s so amazing to see such beautiful happy faces, and that everything came true for them!

David, being a photographer, had no end of photographer friends to picture his wedding day, so please check each image for Photographer credits!