Our Bridal Services
We provide a wide range of professional Bridal & Formal dress services to meet your needs. Other than general fitting and Bustling of wedding gowns seen on other pages of this site, we offer redesigning and construction of wedding garments.
Bridal Gown Fitting, Hemming and Bustling
Wedding Gowns are very special garments that require extra special care. We at Leanna Studios have 40 years of experience caring for these precious garments. Whether your gown is new, vintage or a valued family heirloom, it will be treated with the best of care. Basic fitting adjustments and hemming are not basic when it comes to bridal customers and their families. We elevate your experience in these services. Visit our Bridal and Bustle sections of this site for more information.
Creative Hemming Solutions
This hem is tricky because the lace at the bottom is very wide and was cut out underneath in such a way that raising it would move the lace pattern off the cut outs. The resulting effect would be to have several places where the dress was cut and the lace did not cover. The gown does not have a waistline seam so it could not be easily hemmed at the waist.
The bride and I came up with the beautiful effect you see in the second picture. Gathered stitching lines were added to bring up the hem to the desired length then more lace was purchased and placed at the top of the gathering lines to make it look like the design was meant to be there.
Custom Beading, Rose Decorations & Headpieces
This gown is totally designed and hand made by Leanna Studios. Custom Beadwork is hand sewn. Floral Rose Motifs can be any color desired. Matching Headpiece with matching miniature Roses complete the design. Select Services for total or partial design and sewing of gowns is offered on a Special Client basis.
Bridal Gown Repair
This is a Before & After of the same gown, but it had been through 3 weddings by the time this bride inherited it. Note the obvious hole marked by the yellow circle, and the sleeves had deteriorated.
This bride wanted a very different look than her 3 sisters. She designed a lovely embellishment for the train which included adding lace appliques to the sides where the hole was. That and the totally new sleeves give the gown a very fresh look.
Custom Keepsake Garter
Quite often when Bridal alterations are done, some lace and beadwork will end up inside seams or cut of from hems. These items can easily be saved and sewn into a keepsake garter.
Bridal Gown Restoration
This is Before & After pictures of the same gown. On the left is when Mom wore the gown for her wedding. On the right is the daughter in the same gown altered for design and fit. (same photographer too)
The first task was to make the gown larger. For this I used the fabric from the original back bow to gusset the side seams. Since the sleeves were falling apart and needed to be replaced anyway we bought Satin to match the gown and made sleeves (using the original lace for insets) and a new back bow to make it all look like it belonged.
Before
After
Bridal Gown Transformation
This is a very interesting Before & After. The gown was originally made in Italy for the Mother's wedding. She went back to Italy and found some lace that matched well enough to add a section of length, a sweep train and new sleeves. Since the lace was so delicate I sewed the addition with train onto the lining. It gave it a neat effect. The bride also wanted to scoop out the neckline to give the gown a more dramatic look.
Zipper Conversions
Here's a relatively easy solution for the pregnant bride. We removed the zipper and added loops that can now be laced. We used braid for the loops and 5 yards of 1" double sided satin ribbon for the laces. A modesty panel can be made from scraps from the hemming of another gown, or from fabric the color of the bridesmaid dresses as the before & after pictures above.
More examples of Conversions are in the pictures below, with and without modesty panels.
Before
After
Creative Gusseting
I used to hate gussets because those skinny little strips of fabric set into side seams scream, "I'm to big for my dress". When I do side seam gussets, I often cut some space off the adjacent panels to make the gussets look more natural.
My favorite option now is to place the gussets at the zipper sides. This is a very cool solution because it also solves the problem of matching the fabric of the gusset to the fabric of the bodice. contrasting fabric here looks very natural as if it could be a planned design element.
Junior Maid & Flower Girl Options
Since maid's dresses usually do not come in sizes below 8 or 6, it is hard to fit junior maids and flower girls. In these cases I would have the brides order fabric along with her maid's dresses and we would make the additional dresses.
In the pictures above, each bride chose the same bridesmaid dress. For the left picture above, the bride chose to have her flower girl the same color as the maids for her lining, but chose white for the lace. On the right picture above, the junior maids are in contrasting colors, but the same fabric.
Below the junior maid is an exact copy of the Maids dresses while the Flower girl is a softer pink to compliment the large bridal party.
Emergency Solutions
This wedding was almost a disaster. The 2 flower girl dresses in this picture were made by the Grandmother of the bride as a gift for her wedding. The bride picked out lovely maid's dresses in a medium pink to compliment these dresses she knew were being made, and ordered them.
As the wedding date neared the maid's dresses had still not arrived. Tension was heightening, but on assurances from the salon that the dresses would be in soon the bride remained calm - until the dresses arrived 2 weeks before the wedding in a very hot pink color. They were totally not what she had ordered, but the company would not admit a mistake nor did they have time to reorder.
At this time I had moved my business to the back room of a friend's fabric store. The owner of the Salon called and asked if anything could be done at such short notice. I went looking at the bolts of satin fabric we had in the store and found a light pink that seemed to be within the color range they were describing. The bride came over with one of the flower girl dresses. The color match was too good to be true.
We made the 4 bride's maid's dresses in less than 2 weeks and the wedding went off without any more trouble. Many horrifying things happen when you are planning a wedding, but if the bride can keep her head on straight just about any problem can be overcome. Now, so much monochromatic pink was not what the bride wanted but it did look good. We were even able to die the shoes in time to match the dresses.
Mother's Dress Solutions
Here's another cool trick you can do by ordering extra yardage with a Mother of the Bride's dress. The MOB, on the left, picked out this lovely dress in a pail yellow and requested extra yardage. The MOG , on the right, had us make her dress with the fabric.
You may think it a little odd for both Mothers to wear the same color, but this wedding was special. All the guests wore combinations of black, white and yellow. It was a stunning wedding.
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