When I first met with Nancy back in, shoot… was it March? April? I can’t remember really when it was… I do remember that it was cold enough outside to warrant long sleeves but not cold enough for a jacket.

I met Nancy of Knot Couture at Gail K Fabrics in Atlanta. I brought my best friend Devon and my mother along. We had plans to pick out fabric for my custom wedding dress.

I know, seriously. A custom wedding dress? Who can afford that? I was pleasantly surprised at how affordable the dress was going to be, especially considering how talented the pair (Erin and Nancy) were.

I wanted a dress with a story… I would have killed to have been able to wear a vintage dress. But shopping for a wedding dress proved to be complicated and a confidence buster.

I’m certainly not a model. I’ve never been thin. But I fall into the unfortunate black hole between “average” and “plus sized.” Add on to that the fact that I’m only a few inches away from my height being a legal handicap and clothes are impossible. If it’s made for a petite in stature person, it’s also made for a petite in thickness person. If it fits my booty/boobs/thighs, then it’s not proportioned for someone of my height. You know how jeans have sandblasting on the knees? Well that sandblasting hits me in my shins. And I STILL walk on petite length jeans.

Sidebar: While measuring the inseam of my son’s pants with my sister, we got a wild hair and measured my inseam. It was embarrassing, but it was doubly embarrassing when my nine-year-old niece came in and had a longer inseam than me.

Anyway, shopping for a wedding dress at my size was torture… It was painful enough just having to go through the racks to find a STYLE that I liked, but god, holding a dress up to my chest and seeing that the bust line was hitting me on my waist…? Miserable.

In order to make a dress off the rack work for me, I would have to remove the zipper, split the middle of the dress apart and raise the waist, increase the bust and hem the bottom. Alterations that would have easily cost me $400-500.

When that’s my entire budget, it was hard to justify. So on my friend Suzu’s suggestion, I called the girls at Knot Couture up and we started plans for my custom dress. We started with The Sierra Raven and made a few adjustments to the design and then went fabric shopping.

It’s hard to imagine what your dress is going to look like when the fabric is rolled up in bolts on the wall, but Nancy was very helpful in guiding me on fabric choices. We settled on two fabrics (one of which was the last of a vintage silk fabric  and the other was the last of a kind of mod-circle-patterned lace.

Both fabrics, with just enough left on the bolts to complete my dress. A sign? Like, duh.

So in the time since we first met, Colin was diagnosed with two kinds of cancer, I settled the second erroneous custody case that my exhusband brought against me and we moved in together. It’s been a wild and crazy summer. But the end result? We’re stronger, more connected and getting closer and closer to the big day.

At the first fitting, I had that magical moment where you first feel like a bride. It was incredible.

And then, I found this on Instagram:

Oh, be still my little beating bride’s heart. The silk on the skirt portion has this beautiful sort of floral wrinkle (I’m terrible with fashion descriptors, clearly) and it falls just-so on me to disguise all of my imperfections. And the top is just SO sweet. OMG, so incredible sweet and beautiful.

I’m going to pick it up next week. I can’t say enough about my experience with Nancy and Erin of Knot Couture. If you need a wedding dress, you need to get in touch with these two…