With love from mom! Elina sewed both of her daughters outfits for the big day—“A wedding dress carries a lot of expectations and emotions”
This Finnish mother used every trick she knew while sewing her daughters the wedding dresses of their dreams. She hit a few bumps along the way, but the daughters never doubted their mom.
When Elina Heikkilä’s younger daughter Iina got married a few years ago, she hoped her mother would sew her gown. It became a special and meaningful project that pushed even this experienced seamstress to raise her game.
Her older daughter Emma’s wedding took place in 2024. She, too, said “I do” in a fairy-like gown sewn by Elina. For Emma, no other option felt quite right.
Elina had already spent years sewing spectacular ballroom dance costumes, a world her own son introduced her to. After his dancing hobby ended, she continued sewing costumes for others. However, making a wedding dress ended up being different in many ways.
“There are a lot of expectations and emotions involved, because a wedding dress is one of a kind.”
Iina was up first. The broad vision for the dress came together quickly, but the details were still uncertain, and at times the bride’s wishes were completely conflicting: she wanted the gown to be both narrow and flowing, yet airy enough to move in. Mom considered every possibility, whether easy or challenging.
“I bought an outrageously expensive online course about corset gowns for this project. The course was excellent and very detailed, but I had to adapt a lot because the bride didn’t want a stiff, tight corset—she wanted something comfortable. The challenge was to combine the lightness of spaghetti straps, the support of rigilene, and snug bra cups.”
First, Elina sewed a mock-up out of old bedsheets.
“Once we saw that, we could adjust the fit. Sometimes I had to tell her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.’”
Just laying out the lace pieces on the dress form took several hours. Sometimes Elina would take pictures of the layout, check it, and then try a new arrangement.
Elina wanted to invest in top-quality fabrics. She’s used to ordering dance costume materials from abroad, so for Iina’s wedding dress, she ordered lace from Germany and a crepe underskirt from England. She found the tulle at a bridal shop in Tampere, Finland.
“At the bottom was thick, stretchy, luxurious nude-colored crepe, then a layer of delicate Chantilly lace, and on top two layers of fine veil tulle.”
On the bodice, Elina added the lace decoration piece by piece as appliqué. Some pieces were cut from lace fabric, while others were individual lace motifs. She sewed most of them by hand. Just laying out these pieces took hours. Occasionally, Elina took photos, assessed the look, and tried a different arrangement.
Iina’s wedding dress was finished just in time.
“The night before the wedding, I was still sewing hooks to hold up the train. I’d found various tutorials on YouTube. On the wedding morning, I managed to finish the last stitches on my daughter Emma’s green silk dress—she was the maid of honor—and I rushed the dresses to the venue by noon. The photo shoot started at 1 p.m. I made it!”
Luckily, it all turned out brilliantly in the end.
“It was wonderful hearing Iina say her dress was exactly what she’d dreamed of. It perfectly suited her—ethereal and subtly fairy-like.”
Emma, Elina’s firstborn, announced about a year ago that she would get married in May 2024, and the dress had to be ready well ahead of time. She wasn’t willing to handle the same last-minute rush they’d gone through with Iina’s dress.
“We first tried out some ready-made dresses a couple of times because Emma wasn’t sure what she liked. The only thing she was sure of was that she definitely didn’t want lace. Funnily enough, she ended up with a lace dress anyway,” Elina says.
Elina even suggested buying that ready-made gown despite the steep price, but her daughter wouldn’t hear of it—she wanted a dress sewn by her mom.
They first thought of a simple but wide satin dress, but when she tried one on, the bride-to-be complained it rustled too much and felt uncomfortable. Then they tested boho-style gowns, which were comfy but looked too beachy. They were beginning to consider chiffon dresses when Emma tried on a gown with Art Deco-style lace. She fell for it immediately.
Mom tried in vain to find that kind of lace in web stores worldwide but turned up empty. She again suggested just buying that ready-made dress, no matter the price, but Emma refused. She wanted a dress her mom would sew.
“So, we kept searching for just the right lace. Eventually, I found a couple of good possibilities in Germany and ordered sample swatches.”
Emma picked one with small sequins. Sparkle wasn’t on her wish list, but the sequins seemed sparse, and the base pattern was vine-like, so it looked natural enough.
“Emma wanted an elf-or-fairy vibe for her dress, and this lace fit perfectly.”
A new fabric wasn’t really feasible, since we’d already spent several hundred euros on this one, and there weren’t many other options. We needed a clever solution.
When the six meters of lace arrived, Elina was shocked.
“There were a ridiculously huge number of sequins!”
A small swatch hadn’t hinted at what it would look like in a larger piece.
“I was so worried Emma would be horrified and cry when she saw it, because it was the opposite of what she wanted. She was going to shine like a disco ball—and we were going for a natural fairy look.”
Elina panicked, trying to figure out a fix before telling her daughter. Buying another fabric wasn’t an option since they’d already spent hundreds of euros, and there weren’t many alternatives either. She needed a clever idea immediately.
At first, Elina thought about sewing a removable chiffon or tulle overlay to mask most of the shimmer. Then she realized she should look at the lace’s reverse side.
“It was such good quality that only a professional would notice it was inside out. I proposed we flip this pricey lace around so the loud sparkle would be dimmed. That way, the sequins would still have a faint shimmer but not be so glaring.”
They added a layer of tulle under the lace, then used silk bought in Riga, Latvia, for the lining, and finally a soft crepe from Germany against the skin. The cut wasn’t as narrow and mermaid-like as some of the dresses she’d tried earlier.
“I used a store-bought pattern for the skirt and adapted a corset pattern to add straps to the bodice. I also sewed a mock-up of this dress and made the two-hour drive from Tampere to Espoo so Emma could try it on.”
In total, Elina created three different bedsheet mock-ups of the bodice and made several more fitting trips. The biggest—but least obvious—work was matching the lace pattern.
“I didn’t want the vertical seams on the skirt to break the pattern, so I cut and sewed according to the lace motifs, lining them up so the pattern ran continuously. Then I appliquéd some motifs by hand and trimmed any extra tulle.”
The hooks had to be painted white first, so the resourceful mom bought a can of white auto paint and sprayed two tiny metal hooks until they were wedding-ready.
Cutting the fabrics and appliquéing them required plenty of time. Fortunately, there was just enough material, although Elina cut one piece wrong at first.
Once again, she studied different ways to bustle a train on YouTube. They chose both an American-style bustle for dancing length and a French-style bustle that left a small train.
The dress was completed in good time, which pleased the bride. Four days before the wedding, Elina took the gown to Espoo, where she attached the final bustle hooks. She had to paint them white first, so she bought a spray can of white car paint to give those little metal hooks a wedding finish.
“The bride, wearing a flower wreath in her red hair, walked down the aisle in her elf-fairy gown to the sound of 'Concerning Hobbits' from The Lord of the Rings. Once again, the dress turned out beautifully despite my moments of panic. Emma said both the fabric and the cut were just what she’d wanted and that the dress was exactly right for her.
how on earth did Elina pull off these challenging gowns for her daughters so successfully?
“I’ve loved crafts and clothes ever since I was little. My grandmother was into all kinds of handiwork—bobbin lace, woven rya rugs, knitting—and she even sewed me 1950s-style dresses when I was a preteen and a big Elvis fan.”
In middle school, Elina didn’t choose crafts as an elective because it was her weakest subject—her grade was 8 out of 10. A few years later, though, she taught herself to sew miniskirts and sweatshirts at home.
“When you sew a cuff ribbing inside out enough times, eventually you learn how to do it right.”
A skilled hobbyist, she worked as a physical therapist for 20 years before heading back to school at 39 to become a textile crafts teacher. The career change felt right, which is no surprise when you look at what Elina sews now.
You can see more of Elina’s dresses on Instagram at @Helma_kilpatanssipuvut.
