Wedding To Weekend Style With Weddington Way

I was recently asked to participate in Weddington Way's November Style Challenge, the object of which is to style a bridesmaid dress for wedding wear and then transition it into a weekend outfit. I chose to style The Veronica bridesmaid dress in champagne toast because of its classic style. And it has pockets. Who could resist? You can check out all of Weddington Way's bridesmaid dresses here. To tie the two looks together, I chose a nice deep red as my accent color. The wedding look is simple, but with stunning accessories to keep it from being boring. Then I took the dress into cozy Fall weekend wear with a cropped sweater, chunky scarf, and truly excellent boots.

WEDDING WEAR

DETAILS// Shoes::Pouch::Earrings::Bracelet::Nail Polish::Eye Liner::Lippy

WEEKEND WEAR

DETAILS//Sweater::Bag::Shoes::Scarf::Socks::Mascara::Nail Polish

Before & After // London Fog Trench Coat

 A few weeks ago, I thrifted this perfect dove gray London Fog trench coat. I used to steal my parents trench coats when I was younger to play dress up. I liked to pretend that I was a detective, okay? Jeez. Now I have my own. I couldn't resist the color of this coat and, for $6, it was a bargain. This is a perfect DIY for Fall fashion.

 This was a very simple alteration. I wanted to shorten the jacket from full length to knee length because it complements my dresses better. I used a ruler and some chalk to draw a line straight across the outside of the jacket to make sure I made an even cut. I ended up only removing about 7 inches of fabric, deciding to make a wide double hemmed band across the bottom (which took the hem line up another 3 inches or so). I folded the cut edge twice and pinned it in place before using a simple straight stitch to create the new band at the bottom.

 I love altering thrifted pieces to better suit my style. It's fun to work from scratch sometimes, but these projects are rewarding because they tend to be pretty quick and simple.

Vintage Velvet Dress ReStyle

I thrifted this dress last week and knew that with some minor tweaks it would be a great addition to my Fall wardrobe. I liked the initial length of the dress, but I'm more comfortable styling shorter dresses for myself so I took about a foot of fabric off the bottom and created a new hem line. Nothing complicated here. I just folded the cut edge up about a 1/2 inch and used a zigzag stitch to prevent fraying.  You can see in the 'after' picture that I didn't do the best job at making the sides even so I need to go back and fix that. Besides the dress length, I removed every other gold button with a seam ripper. Fortunately for me, the buttons were purely decorative (no button holes) so it was an easy fix. There are loop holes in the back of the dress for cinching which create a nice option for adding a ribbon and giving the dress a more fitted look. This was an easy restyle and I'm excited to have a long sleeve dress to play with for Fall!