Cassie LaBonville of Sanford always knew she wanted to wear her mother’s wedding cheap prom dresses for her own walk down the aisle.
“As a child, I tried it on so many times. It’s always been what I wanted to do,” she said.
But she also knew that the cloud of lace and frills from 1988 would need some changes, though that just raised more questions. Then Cassie saw TLC’s series “Something Borrowed, Something New,” in which brides-to-be choose between a designer gown or their mother’s reimagined and redesigned dress.
“I was like, ‘I have to do this,’” she said. “It seemed like a possibility, because I wasn’t going to wear the poofy sleeves.”
Her opportunity came when her boyfriend Trevor Camanse proposed to her on May 7. She and her mother, Sue LaBonville, visited Midland’s Blue Gardenia Bridal Boutique, which she had heard about through a friend.
Armed with a Pinterest board of photos, they brought LaBonville’s dress to Kelly Wilson at Blue Gardenia. The first step was to determine what the new dress would look like.
“When we came here, Kelly and her daughter pulled all different dresses. I had never tried on another wedding dress before,” Cassie said.
After trying on all different styles, fabrics and silhouettes, they decided to use the skirt from another gown and the bodice of the original. Wilson kept all the lace appliques to use on the veil and bodice, and extra fabric was kept to make future christening gowns for their future children.
LaBonville recalled that within 10 minutes, Wilson and her daughter, Sarah Leonard, were already taking apart her wedding dress.
“It was a little unsettling when it was all laid out here in pieces,” LaBonville said, adding that it wasn’t too difficult because she never was very attached to her dress.
“We were so excited, because we could see that you would love it,” said Wilson.
Indeed, as soon as the trademark ‘80s sleeves were removed, Cassie could begin seeing that her dress was going to be a reality.
Wilson, a retired art teacher from Midland Public Schools, has been remaking vintage wedding dresses for about two years. She gathers gowns from thrift stores and others send her their finds. Her first step is to determine if there is enough usable fabric for a bride’s desired design; sometimes she complements it with other fabric or lace from dresses. While meeting with a bride, she sketches the general idea of the garment, and throughout each appointment continues to ascertain that she and the bride are on the same page with the same goal.
“I think the biggest challenge is interpreting the vision that the bride has and wanting it to be something that they love,” Wilson said.
Wilson, who has also created clothing from scratch, says that repurposing is more fun.
“I get to pull pieces together. It’s kind of like a collage,” she said.
To put the original bodice with the new skirt, Wilson sketched out an idea to bring the two pieces together.
“I thought it would be great to mimic the curve of the bodice,” she said. “I thought, ‘We should open the back up and curve it.’ (Cassie’s dress) was pretty straightforward. They were pretty open to any suggestion I had, which was great.”
Wilson said she has remade about 10 dresses and has seven in the works. The price is based on the amount of work needed, and generally ranges between $500 and $750.
“Every person who gets married wants to be beautiful, whether they’re earning minimum wage and barely making it or whether they have tons of money. I’ve worked with both, and the commonality is that everyone wants to have that feeling and have a beautiful day,” Wilson said. “When I see the people leave, I have a satisfied feeling. It’s really special.”
The trendiness of vintage and bohemian styles lends itself to the popularity of Wilson’s work. She was more than happy to fill the niche for vintage gowns in Midland.
“It’s fun. One of my first people was one of the people I worked with, and she was having a second wedding. She loved the lace of this one dress— it was a long, full ball gown— and I made it into a short lace dress,” Wilson described. “I made a flower girl dress for one of her daughters and the other daughter was kind of tomboyish, so I made lace shorts. It was adorable. I love doing stuff like that, just repurposing and using all the parts.”
On June 9, Cassie was able to try on her reimagined dress for the first time.
“Before this, I didn’t know how it was going to feel. I was a little nervous, but more excited than nervous,” she said. As the appointment ended, she didn’t want to take off the flowing gown.
“The dress has never been more beautiful. I’m just tickled,” said LaBonville as tears came to her eyes. “We have a very special relationship anyway. It’s very special, and I’m glad she had the vision. I did not see a beautiful dress there until Kelly started working her magic and Cassie put it on, and then I could see that it was beautiful.”
LaBonville had even requested her husband take the dress to Goodwill, but instead he had it cleaned and preserved, though the dress didn’t stay in its box once Cassie was old enough to play dress up.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m not going to get to ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ but was so much more special to do. It was such an experience, something I’ll never forget,” Cassie said. “It felt like being on “Something Borrowed, Something New.” We came in and it was such an experience.”
Cassie, who plans on preserving the dress in the hopes that her future daughter may wear it, said that her fiancé knows that she is wearing her mother’s remade gown.
“I think he thinks it’s cool. He knows my mom is my best friend,” she said.
Cassie said she sees the fact she is wearing her mother’s wedding cheap prom dresses uk as symbolic of their relationship.
“We have a really special bond,” she said.
“My parents have shown me what a happy marriage looks like, and I hope I have that for the rest of my life,” Cassie said. “It’s just special to wear something that started their happily ever after, and now it will start mine, too.”
Kelly Wilson has closed the storefront for Blue Gardenia Bridal Boutique but will continue to work out of her home as Blue Gardenia Bridal.
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