Weddingbee Blog

My dress swatches finally came in!

The white postcard is a swatch sent to me by Alexandra Bridal Salon in San Francisco where I purchased my gown (I’ll share more about my dress shopping experience in a later post). Although the lighting is awful and you can’t tell in the picture, the satin fabric is off-white in color with a sheen that’s almost metallic.

Attached to the yellow paper are two swatches from my cheongsam purchased at Dragon Seed Bridal in Chinatown, SF. This small and busy shop designs Chinese-style dresses for many of the ladies who participate in Miss Chinatown pageants in northern California. I ordered my dress to resemble the cheongsam that my mom wore at her wedding:

I tried to stuff myself into her dress, but unfortunately it was a bit too small. Mama Eggplant weighed 100 lbs when she got married! The dress buttoned all the way up, but one slight move and I would’ve blinded someone with a spray of exploding sequins. Nope, not gonna work. So I ordered my own cheongsam and it looks almost exactly like my mother’s in the picture above. My dress will be white satin like my mom’s with added pink piping along the edges. It’ll be decorated with a design of pink peonies rather than the phoenix on my mom’s dress.

I haven’t known many brides that were able to walk down the aisle in their mother’s (or other family member’s) wedding attire, perhaps because of style changes, fabric deterioration, or size differences. My friend that married recently wore her sister’s wedding dress, which I thought was both meaningful and thrifty. I’ve always wanted to incorporate my parents’ wedding into my own, but wearing Mama Eggplant’s wedding dress wasn’t an option because she gave it away. Her cheongsam didn’t quite fit me, so I did the next best thing and had one made that will look just like hers.