Weddingbee Blog

Hi everyone! I’ve had lots of inquiries about my bustle so I decided to include as much info as I have about it here for you.

Here’s what I know:

My seamstress at David’s Bridal called it a ‘ballroom bustle’ but I now know that’s not the proper term for the style. One site I found refers to mine as the ‘train flip’, found here (it’s the last one on the page), although I did a Google search on ‘train flip bustle’ and nothing came up…I’m guessing that’s just her term. Anywho, whatever you want to call it, I made a Photoshop mock-up of how David’s did it…

(picture the dress as see-through, and everything shown here is on the underside of the skirt)

The red circles are buttons, and the black curvies on the end of the train are fabric hooks, all sewn to the underside. So basically, the buttons come up right under my butt and the hooks are along the edge of the train, face down, touching the floor.

To bustle (again, this is all on the underside of the skirt so you don’t actually see any of this when the dress is on):

The easiest way is to start on one SIDE of the train, find the first hook, and loop it over the first button, then work your way up and around the skirt until you get to the last hook and button on other side. Basically, my friend ended up under my skirt in a very compromising position at one point, It took 11 hooks & buttons to get my skirt up and the bottom to lay flat.

A few things to note:

My dress was asymmetrical. So, if your seamstress tells you it can’t be done because your dress is asymmetrical, either I’m the exception or he/she is wrong. All it takes is a little tweaking of where the buttons should be attached. I’m certainly no seamstress but I honestly can’t think of any kind of train that this wouldn’t work on, unless of course it’s so long that pulling it up to your butt wouldn’t actually get it off the floor. Even then though, I imagine you could attach the hooks higher up the train so it folds over itself.

And here’s every picture I have that shows off the bustle (if even just a little bit):

I really hope this helps! And if anyone knows the proper term for this bustle style, I’d love to know!!