To catch you up on the story:

Elena bought a dress for her wedding. Drycleaner shrunk dress. We shopped for new dress. Decided dresses too expensive. Elena got frustrated. Drew picture of her dream dress. I got bored with grading papers one day. Made up dress in miniature. Elena saw it and jumped up and down, hugging me. We took sample to several wedding dress shops, plopped it on the table and said, “How much?” We talked them down and ordered the dress.

Whew! Of course it was more drawn out and there were hilarious translation mishaps along the way, but we have paid the deposit (by ‘we’ I mean ’she’, of course) and the dress will be made. Here’s what it will look like!

 

     Front, side, back

This is muslin, of course. The finished product will be of ivory satin. Elena and I will personally shop for the lace for the decolletage and the buttons for the back, as Korean tastes and ours are not usually the same. Then it’s all in the hands of the dress shop, the owner of which we really like. She was willing to listen and ask pertinent questions, and understood our need to micromanage it. Plus, all the dresses in her shop were sew with top quality, so we’re feeling confident in her.

So, YEAH! I will not be here when it’s completed (I’ll have already moved to LA), but by coincidence Elena is getting married during my school’s winter break, which means ROADTRIP to Albuquerque, NM to see the final version! So exciting!

 

After a month of trying to figure out DVD v Video formats and how and where to upload it, I finally got my short video tour of the small Tongdaemun market on YouTube!  Now that I know how to get it done, I will try to get to the big market to show you that one, too, cuz you WILL NOT believe it!

Here’s the link. CHECK IT OUT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHYhpnNFieE

Friday we spent trying to mitigate the disaster regarding Elena’s wedding dress (the one that shrunk in the dry cleaning).

There is one street in Seoul — that just happens to run right in front of my university — that is known as “Wedding Dress Row”. Imagine a half-mile of road lined on both sides with wedding dress, wedding hanbok and wedding photography shops. It’s not a trip for the faint-hearted!

Elena and I girded our loins and began the journey with our little sob story. In the very first shop we stepped into we met a customer who spoke English — and I was all prepared with my semi-Korean spiel. But it was great meeting her. Apparently she was in the shop having just stepped off the plane to get a concert performance dress made up (she’s a violinist). So that was fun getting a little help getting acclimated.

We found a great dress there, and we also drew up designs for an alternative, which they could make up for us. I think that was our favorite shop overall (why is it always the first one?).

We trooped through many of them, though understandably we just peeked in a lot of windows near the end and skipped them if we didn’t see something perfect.

In the end, we found three ready-made that she liked, then the one we had drawn up. They were all much more than she spent on the pre-shrunk version, but that’s what they cost here. The very first dress she picked out is the one she liked the best. It’s very sleek and simple, with just a bit of crystal beading. I think that’s the one she’s going to choose, even though it’s the most expensive, because the accents looked vaguely Indian, and her husband’s family is from India — on top of being a gorgeous dress. We’re going back to look at it next week with a body shaper (modern-day corset, if you’ve never heard that term) to see if we can solve the “tummy issue” it had.

What was fun was seeing all the different trims, beads, gee-gaws and sequins on some of these gowns. We kept saying ’sleek, modern’ and they would pull out the perfect dress and then start pinning masses of flowers and crap to it. They learned quickly not to!

It was an exhausting day, but Elena was happy with the results as she really didn’t expect to find anything that she’d like/would flatter her/would fit. She knows now that she has choices and plenty of time to make them.

I had a laugh because at one point when Elena said, “You’ve really got your Korean noises down!” My Korean is definately NOT good, so there were a lot of cultural noises, hand gestures and sketching going on. But it worked, so if the ‘client’ is happy, I’m happy!

A successful day then!