And yes those, are tennis shoes on my feet.
First things first: the dress held. For a strapless dress altered using the half-assed method, I was completely impressed. It held perfectly, no wardrobe malfunctions to report.
The hem, however, was a different story...
The wedding ceremony took place outside. We had a light rain pretty much all day. Fortunately the light rain tapered off just in time for the ceremony, but wet grass and gravel do not mix well with a floor-length dress!
The spot for the ceremony was at the bottom of a slight hill in a grassy area under a tree. Since it had been raining, most of the girls decided to forego the flip flops (yes, the standard shoe was flip flops...this bride is the BEST) and just go barefoot on the grass so that we didn't have anyone slipping and falling. Side note: I will fully admit that during the rehearsal, I executed a somersault down the aisle...because that's how I roll. Ha.
When we initially hemmed my dress, we made it floor length, but it quickly became evident that due to the outdoor venue, that was not going to work. After the obligatory pictures of the wedding party were complete, I hightailed it into the house of the bride's parents, whipped out her mom's sewing machine and got to work bringing the hem up a few more inches. I didn't bother to measure or pin, just eyeballed it and worked fast. It is absurdly uneven, but it really didn't matter. I only sewed the outer layer.
I put the dress back on, and in a miraculous turn of events, I was able to completely zip it up myself - by the time I was done, there was no one at the house to zip me! I was worried I was going to have to trudge back up to the reception site holding my unzipped dress on me, which would have been less than awesome. After the dress was back on, I took the shears and just cut the liner layer all around to shorten it...and it is a complete hack job, here's the worst section:
It doesn't matter that it's completey hacky and uneven. I have no plans to wear the dress again in the future, but just for fun, I'm going to shorten it to knee length...I'll post that when it's done!