‘Terrified’ bride forced to make her own DIY wedding dress after original didn’t fit

A savvy bride was in for an ‘unbelievable’ amount of stress after she was left without a wedding dress 14 days before her big day, so she made the brave decision to make one of her own

It’s safe to say that weddings can be undeniably stressful from sorting out the finer details to sourcing the perfect dress for your big day. One bride stumbled across an “unbelievable” hurdle after the dress she chose was too small and she was left without a dress 14 days before her wedding.

The savvy woman, however, quickly put her thinking cap on and took to the fabric stores in New York to get hands-on with her outfit for the big day. Andrea Helfrich Presta took to popular video-streaming service TikTok to unveil how she and her seamstress made an “amazing” dress within the limited timeframe.

Captioning the post of the viral video, she wrote: “Making a wedding dress was probably not the smartest idea but honestly, the mems.”

The bride-to-be had intentions to wear another dress, which she had ordered six months in advance, but when it arrived she noticed that it wasn’t a suitable fit.

She, therefore, made the quick decision to make a dress herself.

Andrea explained: “This is unbelievable, but this is the true story of how we made my wedding dress 14 days before my wedding.

“So, I drove myself to New York and I went to Fabric Row and I was like, ‘I’m going to pick out fabric and we’re going to make a dress’.

She continued: “We picked out illusion, which matched my skin tone, because that is important, and then my journey continued to about seven fabric shops.

“I had a vision – I wanted a long sleeve dress with an open-back illusion, so I grabbed some extremely heavy rolls of fabric and just tried them on.”

If the situation wasn’t stressful enough, the bride was in for an unexpected shock when she realised that the fabric she chose would need adjustments, which would take 22 hours.

Andrea said: “I’m back in Philadelphia, I have my entire dress in this bag, and I’m walking into my seamstresses – but it was the scariest thing she could have told me because she said ‘you need to cut out all of this asoke before I sew it on’.

“I ran home and my maid-of-honour and her mum brought home these crazy fabric sheers, we had 17 yards of fabric. Me, my mum, and my mother-in-law spent 22 hours cutting out this applicant.”

Although the upcoming bride admitted that she was “terrified”, her seamstress was able to work some miracles.

She explained: “I was terrified, but my seamstress is a goddess and we cut it down to the wire – this is 11pm the night before my wedding and she’s still going.

“I must have tried this thing on 15 times and let me tell you – getting a wedding dress on and off of any sort is just not easy, but it was coming such a long way that I developed a crazy rash on my neck, so we stuck this double sided tape down on my neck.”

Thankfully the stress was worth it as Andrea described the final result and “amazing” and she came away with a “crazy story”, which she wouldn’t want to trade.

Taking to the comments, users gushed over the beautiful dress, although a few admitted that it wouldn’t be their option of choice.

One person gushed: “Wow the talent of everyone involved! Your dress looked perfect.”

A second admitted: “Turned out amazing, you’re crazy brave I would’ve brought a new one, but you killed it.”

Andrea replied: “You’re so sweet. It was during Covid and shops were weeks out for appts and shipping unpredictable. I felt like this was my only option how nuts.”

“OK wow the stress was WORTH it!” A third added.

A fourth agreed: “This was 10000% worth the stress so timeless.”

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