Remember this cake that I talked about last fall?

You know, the cake where I gave some folks hives by inventing the word "gradiated" to describe it?

Well, if that cake was a dress, it would be this flabbergastingly gormendulous (MAKING UP WORDS!) dress that Laura wore to her wedding in Buffalo, NY. Custom made with fabric hand-dyed by Laura herself... this thing was astounding:

I've got the full story from Laura and so many more pictures...

I was inspired by Alexander McQueen's rainbow shipwreck gown, which is totally amazing and unattainable especially for a plus sized gal. But it was always in the back of my mind as the dream dress.

In Buffalo, NY we have a brand new custom bridal/formal dress shop ( madebyanatomy.com) owned and operated by a girl in her late twenties. Her name is Ali and she is awesome, I was really happy to spend my dress budget locally! I took her my sketch of the dress, I thought she may not want to take on the challenge but she was so excited about it from the very beginning.

From the start I also knew that I wanted to dye all the fabric myself. I dye stuff all the time for different art projects, but never silk. Which was not as hard as I thought it would be. The skirt is made from many layers of silk chiffon. Each color was dyed separately. I used about 9 colors of dye to produce 21 different colors in total. The fabric was then cut into strips and hand sewn onto a silk base.

For the bodice the dress I want to do something a bit different. It is made from a heavy silk. I dyed this fabric by wading it up wet and then sprinkling several colors of dye powered over it, and then sealing it in a plastic bag. I went through that process twice to get the desired effect. This was very nerve-racking because the fabric cost $100 for the bodice. I spent about 15 hours dying fabric, plus time to test colors with the fabric. I even dyed the silk ribbon to lace up the back

Once everything was dyed I dropped the fabric off at the dress maker and she worked her magic. The top is corseted, which was not something I had originally wanted but I'm glad I went with it because I got to walk around without a bra (haven't done that since 5th grade) and my boobs looked amazing!

YES THEY DID. As a final note, Laura says:

Ali spent about 150 hours on the dress... and yes, it cost a bunch.

We'll have the full scoop on this wedding soon, but I couldn't wait to share the dress!