Red Wedding Gown

The power of the dress

When the world turned its attention to the royal wedding last month in London, the microblogging site Twitter nearly collapsed under the crush of admiring tweets. But the biggest surge of comments weren't about the groom or his famous grandmother or even the bride herself.

Oh, no: They were about a few yards of silk and lace. "It's all about the dress," said Sarah Dornink, whose namesake dress boutique, Dornink, opened three years ago in Des Moines' East Village. "For any bride, that's the thing she's thought about since she was a little girl." And for any designer, there is no bigger runway than the red carpet that runs through Westminster Abbey. Not the Oscars. Not the president's inauguration. Nothing demonstrates the power of a single piece of clothing quite like the spectacle that swirled around Kate Middleton - sorry: Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

But a dress can cast a spell over commoners, too.

"Sometimes you can see it in their face," Dornink said of the brides who come in for fittings. "They just light up when they try on the right dress."

Dornink made the dress for her own wedding five years ago. She keeps it in the store and pulled it off the rack to show it off. It's long and sleek, with diagonal strips of silk satin and brocade she patterned after a hardwood floor. It's not exactly the frothy pile of ruffles she had envisioned as a child.

"I found a pattern in a book, with a monstrous white heart and puffy sleeves," said the designer, now 32.

She grew up near Roosevelt High School and spent a good chunk of her early years picking up pins under her mom's sewing table. Her mother, Faythe Dornink, taught home economics for a few years and made many of her daughter's dresses, including an itchy white Easter dress and slinky black Morticia Adams costume with long shredded sleeves. There were a couple of prom dresses, too, including one with a midriff-baring top inspired by a skating costume of Kristi Yamaguchi's.

"She always told me, 'Mom, don't worry about my date. I'll worry about the date. Just get the dress done,' " said Faythe Dornink, who sold custom-made clothing from home before teaming up with her daughter at the store.

The younger Dornink hadn't planned to follow in her mom's footsteps. She studied math at the University of Iowa and didn't learn how to sew until her senior year. But her notebooks told a different story. She'd filled them with fashion sketches, doodles from distracted moments during class.

If wearing a red wedding dress what color should the bridesmaids ...

I think it will depend on the season, the time of the ceremony, and how formal.

If it’s in the winter or for Valentine’s Day, I think if the whole wedding party were totally in black it would be very elegant and avante-garde. Perhaps the men could wear the same shade of red as your dress for their ties and all the flowers could be red. But black ties with black shirts would be so chic!

In the spring, I would go with green as red would remind me of tulips in the spring. I would have them for the flowers as well.

If it were around the 4th of July, I would have a red, white, and blue theme with you being the red of course!

In the autumn I would go with earthy colors – think falling leaves.

Any color you want. As a personal preference I would stay away from white since that is traditionally reserved for the bride. Since you have chosen a red one, I’d avoid white altogether. I think black would look great as would a nice pink, maybe a complimenting shade of red. The right shade of purple (think eggplant here) might look good.

What time of the year is your wedding? I would avoid anything in a similar shade because it might not look right in the pictures. Black would be very dramatic or you could go with deeper oranges or yellows. A cream colour would be a nice contrast too since you’re not wearing white. Possibly shades of purple but I would avoid any shade that looks too pinky.

Any color you want! Since the bride isn’t wearing a traditional color, you can really play with the colors as much as you want and have fun with it.

However, like others have suggested, the most complimentary colors would be silver, black, white, cream or pink.

Depending on how many you have, you could do something fun like having a different varition of red on each one- pink, peach, maroon, burgundy, etc.

David’s Bridal carries a great selection of bridesmaids dresses…they have a dress that is plain (any color) with a wide sash around the waist which draps down the back of the dress. Put them in white or cream dresses with a black or red sash (take your dress into the shop so they can most closely match the color) or a black dress with a cream or white sash. It will be very clean and very classy.

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