This time 1 year ago I was finalizing all the details for my husband and I's wedding. Tom and I got engaged in June of 2016, and set our date for May 20th, 2017.

If you've had a wedding, or are currently planning a wedding (bless you)  you know how much work goes into it. From the Venue, to the flowers, to the menu to THE DRESS.

My Mom had her wedding dress preserved 35 years ago in the thought that she could pass it along to her daughter one day. It goes without saying that fashion evolves year to year, and although styles come back around, my mother's wedding dress just wasn't "me". At least not 2017 me. hah!

I’ve always loved the idea of daughter's wearing their mother's wedding dresses, at least in theory,  but also feel it's important to find what suits you. I’m not typically one to be sentimental about “things”, but when it has to do with my mom that’s a different story lol.

Even though both my mother and I felt the dress didn’t quite fit my style, we felt like we should at least pull it out of the box and take a look. I tried it on and to both of our surprises it fit me 100% perfectly. We had fun with it that day, mom told me about her wedding day, I took it off and thought that was it.

We both agreed that the style just didn’t suit me. We both got busy with wedding plans and I really didn’t think twice about it. My mom called me a couple of months later and said she had talked to a friend who had a cool idea. She told me it wouldn’t hurt her feelings if I didn’t like it, but told me what her friend had suggested. Her friend suggested that we “reinvent” her wedding dress into something for the rehearsal dinner. I had already purchased my wedding dress at this point and thought it was a fantastic idea.

We talked about what we could make from the dress. After a lot of thought we agreed that a jumpsuit would be perfect. Nothing is more my style than a jumpsuit, and felt it would stand alone from my wedding dress. We went to Joann’s Fabric and matched the whites of the fabric to the top of the wedding dress. They had a huge selection at the time and it wasn’t too difficult to match.

Once we had everything we needed it was time for snipping. My mom had assured me 1,000 times she wanted to do this for me, but also told me there would be tears. But when it came time to start cutting there were...none! She said that it really just made her excited to see the dress live on, in a different way. Isn't she the best.

I take absolutely a whopping zero credit for this. This was all my mom. While I was off doing 100 other things for the wedding she was making this for me.

We left the top exactly the same. It needed no alterations as it fit me perfectly. We modified a pants pattern (I'm sorry I can't remember which one!) to fit to the top, and BOOM. We're done right!?

Of course not, with my mom and I we're always thinking about the next thing. My wedding dress fabric had no beading or lace, and I wanted to "go hard" on the veil. I was looking at veils because all the ones I loved were close to, if not, 1,000 bucks. After gaining some confidence with the wedding dress turned jumpsuit we thought why not make a veil!?

We had plenty of lace left over from the bottom of my moms wedding dress so we pulled it all off one by one. And back to Joann's we went. We matched the tulle to my wedding dress, picked up a hair comb and watched some YouTube videos. I couldn't have been more happy with my veil. It was exactly what I wanted visually, but had so much more meaning to me. PLUS I used the money I saved to splurge on THE Manolo Blahniks that I've loved for so long. You know, the Sex and The City ones. If you're getting married and have access to your mother's wedding dress I would highly recommend using it in some way. It doesn't have to be YOUR wedding dress. But if you can find a way to incorporate it some how, I guarantee you'll be glad you did.