Bustle Your Wedding Dress

Bustling your wedding dress before your wedding reception can be overwhelming for your bridesmaids. As we wrote in a previous article on How to Bustle Your Wedding Gown, NJ Wedding Vendors explained that bustling your wedding gown is customized for your wedding gown style.

The best planning you can do is to have your maid of honor watch the bustle demonstration while one bridesmaid makes a video and one or two write down the instructions of how to bustle your wedding gown. If some of your bridesmaids can’t be at the final fitting, upload your video to YouTube so they can learn how to bustle your wedding dress, too.

Before your wedding day, preferably the day you have your hair done for a pre-wedding trial, get together with your bridesmaids and maid of honor to practice bustling your wedding dress. By practicing your wedding dress bustle, you can also see how your headpiece and jewelry look with your wedding gown. You could also plan to have your make-up done on the same day…only be sure to step into your gown so that it doesn’t rub off on your gown!

Read the article that follows for more tips on How to Bustle Your Wedding Gown…

The View From Behind - Your Bustle
By Laura Firenze

One of the features that makes a wedding gown feel extra special is the train. A bride will feel very grand walking down the aisle with her beautiful train sweeping gracefully behind her. After the ceremony, though, you will definitely need a way to get the train out of your way for walking around and dancing. This is the job of the bustle.

There are almost as many bustle styles as there are types of gowns. Different trains will call for different techniques. It is very important that the gown looks as beautiful bustled as it does with the train down, so have your seamstress show you different choices if the first attempt at creating a bustle looks awkward (or if it makes your tush look huge!).

One of the simplest bustle options is to pick the train up and secure it to the outside of the gown towards the bottom of the skirt. This works particularly well for little sweep trains. Usually one fastener will suffice to get the entirety of a petite train off the floor. It is prettiest if the bustle fastener is decorative or discreet, as it will be visible on the outside of the gown when the train is lowered. A tiny hook with a thread eye can be a good choice for a lightweight train. A very attractive fastener is a handmade toggle system. It should coordinate with the rest of your ensemble, so is you are wearing pearl bridal jewelry, have a tiny loop of pearls through which the little bar will slide.

Bigger trains call for more elaborate bustles. One that works well with most medium length trains is the French bustle. In this system, the train is pulled up underneath the skirt of the gown, creating a pretty pouf effect (it should be done fairly low on the skirt, so that a big mound of fabric is not created over the derriere - around knee height is usually perfect). A French bustle is usually designed with a series of fabric ties, with one set higher and one set lower on the inside of the gown’s skirt. When the strings are tied together, the train is formed into the bustle.

Matching up all those little ties can be a nightmare for the person assigned to the task. To prevent confusion and frustration on the day of the wedding, the bustler should attend one of the bride’s final gown fittings to get a lesson from the seamstress. A great way to make the process more clear is to color code the pair of ribbons, so it is easy to tell which ones to tie together. A beautiful way to do this is with organza ribbons (which tie nicely and do not slip). Add little fabric flowers to the ends of each tie, then all your attendant has to do is match up the flowers, and presto - bustling made easy. A great alternative to the flowers is to code the pairs of ties with little crystals or pearls (once again, match them up to the bride’s crystal or pearl bridal jewelry). It makes the bustle both pretty and easy - a win-win situation.

There are certain types of fuller trains which need to be bustled to the outside of the gown. This can be the case with stiffer fabrics that do not drape softly into a pretty French bustle. In that situation, you can bustle the train up near the waistline of the dress using tiny hooks and thread eyes. This works best on gowns that have some sort of waist detail that can be used to hide the hooks before they are used. Avoid an external bustle to the waistline of a princess seam gown (which has panels that flow all the way down the gown instead of a defined waist), as it would ruin the line of the dress.

One last tip on bustling: the back of your gown should be completely off the ground when bustled. If a small amount of the train drags behind you, you will be stepping backwards onto it all night, and it is likely to get torn. A good way to be certain that you will achieve the desired effect is to have the seamstress pin up your bustle when she is hemming the front of the gown. Depending on your height, she may need to shave off a little sliver of the train length, but it will completely worth it to achieve a perfect bustle. Then you will be free to dance until dawn and really have fun at your reception.

Laura is interested in wedding planning and wedding trends including jewelry,receptions and gifts. Come look at our pearl bridal jewelryand bridesmaid gifts at SilverlandJewelry.com

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