Aso-ebi Outfit of the Week

I love the simplicity of this outfit. Not too much going on while still showing off the best features.

Enjoy!!!

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Is This My Dress?

This is another series that I owe you 2 posts for which I will get to this week.

In continuing the "Is This My Dress?" series, I came across a gown that is absolutely stunning!

The gown is by Stephen Yearick and just had EVERYTHING that I was looking for. It's VERY vintage looking, strapless, mermaid fit, with lots of embroidery and beading and not to mention, lace.

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There was only one little problem. The gown is 6x my budget for a wedding gown. Like the Pnina Tornai gown before, I would need to think about whether or not it was worth it.

What do you think? Is it worth it?

Aso-ebi Outfit of the Week

I was caught in so much drama last week with my dress that I couldn't even blog for the rest of it. I owe you an outfit from last week so here it is. I'll post another for this week too.

I LOVE this girl's gele!!....and her outfit is cute too!

 Not sure where I got this from. If this is yours, let me know so I can source you!

Reception Dress Debacle

For many West African brides, one highlight during the reception is changing from their wedding gown to the traditional clothing respective to their countries.

I, myself, was looking forward to this as I LOVE color! Many girls just change into iro and buba with gele but I'm not that traditional and wanted to change into my traditional clothing with a western style of dress. One of my favorites that I've seen is a bride that happened to be featured on Essence some time ago.

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If you can't tell, the girl in the middle with the short dress is the bride. The girl who wore this dress actually changed 3 times and had 800 guests at her wedding. I'm sure the wedding must have been an all day event because their is no way I plan to change that many times during the wedding reception.

As I've continued planning the wedding I had long decided on what type of dress I wanted to change into for the reception. Because I created my own version of strassed shoes, I definitely wanted to show them off by wearing a short dress. But in general, short dresses aren't very formal or grande looking so I still wanted something grand looking especially since I am only changing once. I started tossing up some options and I finally came up with this option.

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Of course, I'm only looking for the style of the dress to be made in African lace and chiffon, not this actual dress. I figured this style would satisfy my requirement of a short dress while still looking a little more grande, plus I wanted to make the train detachable so I could take it off while I was dancing. Simple enough, right?

My mother who has sewn for many, MANY years complained that she felt she wasn't involved enough in wedding planning (a decision I made that I may or may not get into in this blog, but she is very right that she has not been involved in the planning) and wanted to make my reception dress. I had ALOT of reservations but eventually trusted her to do it because I wanted her to feel like she did something for the wedding.

HUGE MISTAKE!!!

Not only did she make a dress that she BELIEVED that I should wear, she made up excuse after excuse after ALL of the fabric had been cut up as to why she couldn't make it in the way that I requested. Specifically she made a detachable train that went around my hips instead of under the bust area and she could never get the bust part of the dress right. Mind you, I went back and forth on specifications 5 or 6 times in the process. She eventually stated, alternatively, she could try to SALVAGE the dress and make another style of dress that looked more similar to this:

I was hesistant again about having her try to salvage the dress, but being the "good" daughter and all, I opted to let her try again.

Shame on me, because she messed it up AGAIN! It was looking okay until you got to the layered tiers on the dress. As you can see, there is a slit in this dress and when she remade the dress she made the layers uneven so that one side of the dress with layers is longer than the other. When I, as well as my fiance, explained this to her, she came up with excuse after excuse of why it was longer. When asked if she would fix it, she stated that she is no longer interested in fixing my dress. WAIT! WHAT! 

You've cut up all my fabric and left me with a practically unusable dress to say that you are no longer interested in fixing it! I was done and so was my fiance. I'm now at the point where I have to find someone who will be willing to try and salvage the dress. It's not completely unusable, but I know the costs to fix it will be the cost of a new dress. Just for reference, I do have other fabric, but it's a completely different color than what I wanted to use, plus it's the aso-ebi color of my mother's friends for the wedding and I'm not sure if I want to use the same color as them.

I'm also considering other different styles of dress now. What do you think?

Can you tell I like ruffles?

 

If you've read this far, GOD BLESS YOU for reading my vent! I'm trying to figure out if there is another style of dress that I should go for. I'm also considering other styles of dress now. Or maybe I should just have a new dress made in the other fabric? What do you think? Please vote!!!

Wedding Video Trailer - Itunu and Tope

As promised, I have the video trailer of Itunu and Tope's wedding day. The videographer used one of my favorite songs for the trailer. Enjoy!!


Videography by Creative Video Editing Films

View on ExposureRoom

Wedding - Itunu and Tope

I love the beading and embroidery on this girl's wedding dress. I actually tried this dress on as one of the MANY dresses in my search.

She had a BIG wedding! I can definitely say that I've never seen a wedding with TEN flower girls plus orange and green is a nice change from the ever so popular purple this year. Enjoy!!!

Photography by Jean Valentin Photography

Stay tuned for the video trailer that I have tomorrow!

If you'd like to see more photos of this wedding, click here.

If you'd like to have your wedding featured on Naijawed N More, click on Submit Your Wedding or contact me.

Look for Less: Maggie Sottero/Alfred Angelo

I'm not much of a princess ballgown type of girl, but I know there are those who's wedding day is their day to be a princess.

The Look for Less today serves just that girl.

Maggie Sottero Madelyn Rose = ~$1,200

Alfred Angelo 203 = ~$800

Love Shoot: Gladys and Michael

GORGEOUS!! 'Nuff said

Photography by RhPhotoArts

If you'd like to see more photos of this love shoot, click here.

Aso-ebi Outfit of the Week

This.....THIS RIGHT HERE is one for the books!

I just love how she put the colors together for this outfit.

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Real Wedding Feature: Titi and Remi, Part II

To close out our Real Wedding feature, we have part 2 of Titi and Remi's wedding day. I just want to thank all those that contributed to this feature (you know who you are) and stay tuned for more of the like. Enjoy!!

Photography by Adonye Jaja

5. Tell us about finding your wedding dress.

Finding my wedding dress was very easy because I knew exactly what I wanted, it was just a matter of being able to find it. I wanted something simple, yet nice, elegant and a bit vintage. I had been looking through magazines and had decided that I wanted a mermaid/trumpet wedding gown. I narrowed it down to a few Allure and Jim Hjelm dresses. I went to one of the bridal boutiques here in Atlanta with my fab Big sisters, Yewande Durojaiye and Titilola Sogunro, who were my style experts since they both had been through the process before. We decided to go with THE dress, and I couldn’t have been happier with my choice.

6. How does being a West African bride differ from being an American bride?

Funny question…I am not sure, but I would answer the question. I’d say being a West African Bride in America means that you probably can’t have the wedding planned exactly your way because your parents will have about half of the guest list, and you have to put them into consideration in a lot of the decisions. Thankfully, my parents were gracious enough to let me have it my way for the wedding.

 

 

7. Did you do anything out of the ordinary or non-traditional?

Yes! There were a few things that were out of the ordinary about the wedding. Our ceremony was more of a worship service with my husband and I being joined at the service because we wanted it to be about God and not about us. Also at the reception, we had a praise break to honor and worship God before we proceeded to the rest of the program.

 

9. What was the biggest thing you did to save money?

There were a few things we did to save money, but one I can speak of is making cake for less than the number of people expected because not everyone eats cake at a wedding, so we ended up making cake for 125 people as opposed to the expected number of 400.

 

10. What was your biggest splurge?

There was really nothing that I splurged on other than my wedding dress, and make-up which I was very pleased with.

11. What advice would you give to someone planning their wedding?

My advice to anyone planning their wedding would be to surround themselves with supportive people on the day of the wedding. Make sure you don’t sweat the small stuff. Chances are, no one else knows what goes wrong except for you and your planner, so just do the best you can and let God take care of the rest. The day will turn out more relaxing if you do.

If you'd like to have your wedding featured on Naijawed N More, click on Submit My Wedding or contact me.