Uncle Chad's Wedding

Uncle Chad and Auntie Amanda got married on November 5. We didn't snap a lot of pictures. Had we been thinking, we should have taken a cgLitz family photo. For the longest time I didn't think that we got a picture of Sophie, but I discovered one of the girls with the Grandmas.

Emily loved being a flower girl. I didn't think I would get her into her dress and cowboy boots. At home, she kicked off the cowboy boots after only a few minutes of wearing them. As for the dress, I learned that the elastic in the sleeves was too tight. Once I loosened it, things went much better. She did kick of the cowboy boots at the reception, but the dress stayed on all night. And Emily stayed up all night. I finally drove Greg and Emily to the hotel at 12:30. She absolutely refused to give up, and danced all night.

Emily was one of two flower girls. Amanda's niece, Aspyn, was the other flower girl. Aspyn wore that flower girl dress that Amanda wore ~20 years ago. I made Emily's replica dress. I'm thrilled that I was able to do that for Chad and Amanda, but it was an arduous process. Most mornings from September until October I woke up at 6 am to get a half hour of sewing in before Sophie woke up or I was called to substitute teach. There was A LOT of sewing. I first changed the pattern from a princess cut waist to a regular waist. French seams meant that every seam was sewn twice and pressed twice. Then I discovered that my beautiful barrel-chested child would not fit into a size 3 unless I let out the seams to produce an extra inch. There were three layers to the bodice and sleeves, and four layers to the skirt. Marilyn, my mother-in-law, machine embroidered some designs to which I added beads and sequins. A whopping 6 m of organza fishing line hem necessitated multiple trials, errors, trips to the store for heavier weights of fishing line before I consulted a YouTube instructional video (the internet is your friend!!). In the end, I think the dress looked beautiful. It was also exciting to see that the seams have held up. What do I mean? Well, have a look at the video of the girls dancing, and you'll get an idea of the rigorous testing that was done.