Bride-to-be Blogger Kristy: The Hunt For the Right Wedding-Dress Undergarments

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And it’s finally starting to take shape! Nope, not my booty—even after completing squats galore for the past few months (I’m destined to never have one, thanks to my father’s stick frame)—I’m talking about the shape of my wedding dress. After a handful of appointments with my seamstress, about four returned undergarments, and a slight spike in my stress level, the dress is starting to really take shape and it couldn’t happen soon enough because our wedding day will be here before we know it!

I feel like I went into this whole thing extremely prepared. When my dress arrived at the beginning of the year, I instantly dropped it off to my seamstress. (After my parent’s cat had been eyeing up the garment bag that housed my dress to use as a scratching post, I was anxious to get it out of their house.) A few weeks later, my mom and I found ourselves at my first alteration appointment, holding my dress up as my seamstress jokingly complained about the structure of it. The dress fit pretty well from mid-waist down, almost perfectly—but don’t worry, the top half of the dress made up for it’s almost perfection.

While staring at the inches of dress on top that would need to be filled with something, we could instantly tell that this could result in a downward spiral for both my sanity and the sanity of my seamstress. I tried to play it cool, with my A-cup boobies swimming in a pool of wedding dress—how attractive, and just what Eric wants to see on our wedding day!—but I wasn’t going trying to fool anyone, either, and wasn’t planning on showing up to our wedding with misleading cleavage with guests whispering, “What, did they grow over night?”

But clearly, something needed to be done. So my seamstress suggested I invest in a corset-style strapless bra, because it would help boost the girls, and give her some stability around my waist to work with. It would also help hold the dress up, because my nonexistent hips weren’t helping out. I purchased one through Merry Modes, a great online supplier located in North Jersey, and while they were great at exchanging and then returning the items I purchased, unfortunately, I needed something a little more particular.

So after the third trial and failure of finding the “right bra,” my seamstress suggested I go to Harriet’s Innerware, a specialty undergarment store located on Passyunk Avenue. Don’t be fooled by their storefront, or their store—it’s tiny! They have a ridiculous amount of stock stored away, but more importantly, they have an extremely knowledgeable staff who will personally assist you as long as you patiently wait your turn. They encourage you to bring your dress to the store, or at least pictures of it, both because of their return policy and the fact that they customize bras by tailoring them to your shape. It was also starting to get close to crunch time and I was getting a little concerned, so I wanted to make sure that this would work out perfectly.

Well, in about a week, I had my custom bra—and at an affordable price, might I add (comparable to everything I saw online)—just in time for my next fitting. My seamstress and I couldn’t have been happier with the results. It was just what both of us were looking for: a little extra filling for the dress.

Did you have any alternation horror stories? What did you do to solve them?

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