After struggling to find the perfect bridal gown, a New Jersey bride decided to make her own stunning creation: a chic, silk-satin Cinderella-styled gown.
“I didn’t consider making my wedding dress until I started wedding dress shopping, and nothing was looking the way that I had imagined,” Monica Razak told The Epoch Times.
Twenty-eight-year-old Ms. Razak had a specific vision of how she wanted her outfit to look but was disappointed after trying out a few dresses.
“Financially, it wasn’t working out, and aesthetically, it wasn’t working out,” the software engineer said.
In October 2023, she decided to try creating her gown and was prepared to purchase a last-minute dress if it didn’t work out. However, if it did work out, “that would be awesome.”
A keen hobby sewer, Ms. Razak already had a lot of practice making hair accessories, scrunchies, and shirts.
For her wedding gown, she knew she wanted something that would be comfortable and functional so she could easily walk in it, and it should be without embellishments like lace or frills.
“I definitely wanted it to still look like me,” she said. “I didn’t want to look at pictures later on and not recognize myself.”
Taking to Instagram, she asked her followers what they thought she should go with—a princess ball gown silhouette or a mermaid-style dress?
“Everyone said I should go with the mermaid-style dress,” she said. “And the more people said that the more I was disappointed because I realized I was hoping they would say ball gown. That’s when I knew I wanted to do a ball gown-style dress.”
She then got to work, watching YouTube tutorials and learning the various steps involved in creating her dream dress.
Progressing slowly, she worked on a draft dress, using her trusty Brother sewing machine, keeping the entire design a secret from her fiance. To help, her partner turned off notifications from his wife-to-be’s Instagram account, so he wouldn’t see the daily dress updates she shared with her followers.
However, constructing the dress didn’t come without its challenges. Firstly, she didn’t know a lot of sewing techniques as she had worked on only simple shirts and skirts in the past.
“The top [of the wedding dress] is very structured. It’s like a corset-style top. So that involves making sure it fits you very tightly, but then at the waist, it needs to poof out significantly,” she said. “So it took a lot of research.”
Moreover, there were many times when she would look at the dress on the mannequin and feel completely disappointed, regretting the decision to do it all herself.
“I‘d be like, ‘Oh, I should have just bought my own dress; this is taking too long to make, someone else could have done this a lot faster than me,’” Ms. Razak said.
However, she knew she had to snap out of self-doubt and instead, remind herself that she had the ability to complete the task.
In December, when she was close to finishing her draft dress, she tried it on but didn’t like the way it fit and thus, ended up having to take it all apart and redo it.
“That was very discouraging,” she said, adding that the purpose of the draft dress was to ensure she liked the way it looked before creating the final dress.
Initially, the goal was to complete the final dress by the end of January, so she’d have February, March, and April to relax before the wedding. But when February came around, she hadn’t completed it and began to lose hope.
“The thing that got me through was the fact I was sharing this entire process through monthly updates with my community on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok,“ she said. ”People were very invested in this project, more so than I ever imagined. ... Knowing that there were a lot of people cheering me on—I didn’t want to let people down.”
Reflecting on the process Ms. Razak said: “That’s really all you need, some fabric and a sewing machine. I also used a plain zipper, but I think that was it. It was a very basic dress, and I didn’t use any lace or any beading; none of that.”
With the clock ticking, Ms. Razak tried her dress again in April—a month before her wedding—and she was pleased.
“I was so relieved it looked good, and that it was done,“ she said. ”Much as I loved making it, I was so relieved I didn’t have to keep working on it anymore.”
The bride didn’t show her dress to anyone in person before her wedding day.
Marrying her college sweetheart, Josh, on May 5 at a farm venue in Sussex, Ms. Razak dazzled in her long, ball gown-style satin dress. Her fiance was super excited to see her creation.
“I let him know it was going to be simple, not super elaborate. It’s going to look like me,” she said. “I think he saw me and thought ‘Oh, it looked like something you would wear.’ I think he liked it.”
Ms. Razak’s parents were really proud to see her successfully complete the dress, and the wedding guests were surprised to know that she had created the dress herself from scratch and not bought it at a store.
In sharing the story of her “extravagant project,” Ms. Razak said: “Creating something from scratch is always possible. You don’t have the skills to do it, but you really can do it if you just put in a little bit of time and energy, and you find some motivation from somewhere.”
