The Dress

Size UK 8, Summer 2014 La Sposa Ilysse Lace Fishtail Wedding Dress for sale, as pictured above. La Sposa is the upmarket range of the Pronovias company in case that you have not heard of it.

I paid £1900 for the dress, from new, bought directly from a bridal shop, plus the hoop, plus alterations to make it easier to wear (see below).

I wore the dress for the daytime part of my July 2014 wedding (all of 7 hours) and the dress is a summer 2014 model.

It has a beautiful lace overlay with a fishtail that isn't too tight to walk and sit down in. The dress isn't very heavy to wear either.

I am also including the fishtail hoop, that made it much easier for me to walk in the dress without tripping on the lace, that cost me £100 to buy, separately.

I am a larger size 8, more of a 10, with an athletic lower body (regular alpine endurance cycling sadly gives me larger thighs), so there would be plenty of space for alterations for the more slender of ladies. I am 5ft 8 and wore medium heels, so the length of the dress was not touched, so would also be suitable for ladies 5ft10 and shorter I would say.

I adore this dress, but have little storage space and feel that it should get to tell more than one story with its beauty. The dress has since been professionally cleaned and is in it's original dress carry bag waiting for its next adventure.

Alterations:

- The dress rather unhelpfully came with only a side zip for entrance, which meant that after hair and make-up you still needed to put the whole thing on over your head and through the narrow neck opening. Not very practical, a rather claustrophobic experience and my make up artist refused point blank to let me be made up in the dress..... So I found a clever dress designer who tirelessly unpicked the shoulders on both sides and re-sealed them with off white press studs that aren't visibly seen to the untrained eye. This meant that I could step into the dress after having my hair and make-up done. Why La Sposa didn't think of this defies me!

- I also had an extra ribbon put on the underside of the dress along with a press stud, so that I could hold the dress around my wrist to dance in much easier. There's no bustle, but you could of course do this if you wanted, I just liked the flow of the dress held on my wrist.

- Cups have been put inside the dress to give it a little more shape and so that you need not wear a bra with it and aren't a specific size. On the day, I also wore a backless stick on bra from Debenhams to feel a bit more secure! I am a size 32C/D to give you an idea of the rib cage space etc....