Finding the perfect dress for Winter Formal is what every girl looks forward to. Dress-shopping is one of the fun parts of Formal, but Kaitlyn Weis did not go shopping this year- she made her Formal dress.
“It was in the beginning of year school when I decided that I wanted to make [my dress]. I changed the design like 20 times until I finally saw a picture in a magazine and based it off that,” Weis said.
She began working on her dress around Thanksgiving by getting the fabric.
“I picked fabric from a place called Vogue. At first, I wanted tan and black, but then, I saw pink, and I liked that,” Weis said.
She had a picture in her head of what she wanted, but she kept changing her plans of how to make the dress. “The top part took four days to make, and I had to hand-sew it all. I worked on it all four day of the Winter Break,” Weis said.
Not expecting some parts to take as long as they did, Formal was coming up, and she knew she had to finish on time.
“I knew I would get done; I was more worried about how it would look. What if I didn’t like it? I had to picture it in my head. It was a lot of pressure [of how it would turn out], but after I finished the top and saw it all together, I really liked it,” Weis said.
Time was not her main concern. She wanted the dress to be what she had hoped. She did not have a back-up and knew that this dress was what she would be wearing no matter how it turned out.
“I finished the night before. I added the black belt the night before Formal. I ha
d a couple setbacks; some parts took longer that I wasn’t expecting,” Weis said.
During the process, she managed to overcome some obstacles and finish just in time.
“Everyone was super-shocked and thought it was cool [that I made it]. My mom didn’t think I would get it done, but she was pleasantly surprised,” Weis said.
Whenever she said she made her dress, everyone had a similar reaction-shock. Making her dress had some advantages.
“It was definitely less expensive. I paid probably half of what I would hav
e if I bought it, and it fit me perfectly. It was totally worth it because I could customize it to exactly how I wanted it,” Weis said.
It was hard work to make a dress in time that pleased her, but Weis was able to accomplish it.
“I am going to make my prom dress, too,” Weis said.
