I’ve gotten some questions about the dress I wore to our rehearsal dinner and since I had *so* much fun designing it, I thought it would be fun to let y’all in on the planning process!

I hadn’t originally planned to get a dress made for our rehearsal dinner, but I had so much fun working with Mackenzie to create my reception dress that we decided to create another dress together! She’s so incredibly talented and I just love working with her in general and being around her!

I knew I wanted to do something that I could wear to both the rehearsal dinner and the welcome party. For our welcome party, the theme was “Boots, Blazers & Butlers” and the attire was “Western Chic.” Duncan and I wanted both our rehearsal dinner and the welcome part to feel laid back and casual! And for those who asked what “Western Chic” meant we just said for the guys to wear jeans, blazers and boots and for the girls to wear a less-than-cocktail-style dress with cowgirl boots!

So for my rehearsal dinner dress, I wanted something that I could transform from a dressy-ish look to more casual with my cowgirl boots for the welcome party. That being said, we played around with a lot of fun two-piece outfits that were easy to transition into another look.

Above: the design sketch we started with at the very beginning of the process – I love it so much!

I got my wedding dress at Stanley Korshak Bridal and got to know Mackenzie Brittingham (the owner) pretty well throughout the process. I decided to work with her to design my dream dress and its as SO Fun!

After looking at inspiration, I decided I wanted to use lace somewhere in the look. I thought about doing high-waisted white pants paired with a lace crop top with a dramatic sleeve. I also considered doing some sort of see-through lace blazer/jacket to go over a white skirt suit – how cute would that be?!

And funny enough, the day we met to conceptualize the dress, Mackenzie was wearing a black organza tunic top she’d designed herself paired with leather leggings and flats – she looked so cute. The top was sort of like a wrap blazer/jacket that fastened with a bow. It’s SO CUTE! Anyway, her top gave us the idea to play with white organza fabric and maybe do something transparent OVER a pretty lace or white stain maybe.

After we starting playing with the idea of using white organza fabric and dreaming up ideas, I was SOLD. I knew that’s what I was going to do!

And then as we starting playing with a few fabrics, it sort of all came together. She’d already made an organza bow for another client that she showed me and I LOVED how fluffy and fun it was. And plus, I love me some bows!! I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! What do you think?!

I wore these custom-made heels that my Mom made for me for my 30th birthday party and our engagement party (same party because our party was on my birthday this past November!).

Update on January 2021

I thought it would be fun to now show you some of the images from the rest of the night! I mentioned above that I wanted the outfit to transition to something more casual for our western-themed welcome party. Here are some photos from that night. It was such a fun day and night – gosh I wish I could go back! I wish I had more photos – these are just some I have on my phone from that night and always bring a smile to my face!

Since we had a pretty short engagement and had already moved to Denver (most our friends and family are in Texas and Louisiana), we decided to do a fun welcome party after the rehearsal dinner instead of a big engagement party leading up to the wedding. It was one of my absolute favorite parts of the weekend! It was so great getting to see people the night before to get more time with them – it made the actual wedding feel less overwhelming and like we *had* to see everyone.

The hosts of the party surprised us with Bevo (the Longhorn mascot) at the welcome party. It was such a fun surprise! I went to UT-Austin and cheered there. And although Duncan did not go to UT, he’s from Austin and grew up in the longhorn culture :) It was very fitting and so sweet.