Evil Queen Wedding Dress with Black and Purple Trim

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

You may or may not have seen this, but there’s a line of wedding dresses based on the various Disney princesses. You can probably guess that I’ve got a soft spot for Ariel and the gang, and I’m certainly fond of my pretty princess gowns, but it seems to me like something was left out… The fact is, it’s the villains who deserve the most spectacular wedding dresses! If you really think about it, theirs ought to be even more wonderful than any ever made for your standard issue simpering, vacuously beautiful princess. I mean, wouldn’t that be part of the joy of being a villain? You don’t have to worry about looking modest or maidenly, frugality isn’t even in your vocabulary, and if anyone out there gives you static about your wedding colors or where you have your registry, well, darling, that is simply the kind of situation that pet dragons, leftover poisoned fruit or comic-relief henchmen were created for.

So, let us pretend for a moment that Snow White never quite made it to the little cottage in the woods, and there were no red-hot shoes or other such fates for the Evil Queen. (Did you know that in the Disney version she had a name? I didn’t, but it’s Queen Grimhilde, according to Wikipedia. There’s your trivia for the day.) After her husband’s unfortunate death, she found her own Prince Charming, handsome, lacking in empathy and appropriately weak-willed, and threw herself a wedding good enough for the fairest of them all. I like to think that eight sweet little village seamstresses went blind embroidering the trim on her dress, and that the lace underskirt — which you will note, isn’t even visible, although I assure you it’s fantastic — is stained a kind of rusty red with blood from the fingers of artisans working themselves to the bone to get it done before the big day. (Sure, it could have been washed, but why would she? She likes it better this way.)

Now, I don’t really think you could package this up and sell it to a modern audience. Why? They couldn’t handle all this fierce in one dress, that’s why. For most humans, it’s probably better to stick with an imitation of Cinderella or Belle.

I’m not entirely sure that this is small enough to print on one page – so if you print it and it doesn’t work, let me know and I will fuss with it. (It’s almost 11 PM, so I’m rapidly running out of patience…) Also, I think the collar would be tough to cut out; I think you would have to cut between the doll’s shoulders and neck and her hair, and then you would cut a line straight through the middle of the collar, so the collar would slip behind her neck. Or cut off the collar entirely, I won’t hold it against you. It won’t seem as evil, though – some sacrifices must be made to achieve the proper look, you know.


1950s Tea Length Wedding Dress with Scalloped Lace and Apple Blossoms

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

I do love 1950s dresses, and wedding dresses are no exception! This is just a white, tea length one with lots of lace. I’m not too thrilled with the way the flowers turned out, but unfortunately I’ve run out of time for tonight and I need to post what I have. So, I reserve the right to redo them at some point.

Emily guessed the answer to the contest in the comments for this post, so the contest is closed! Last week (from the 8th to the 14th), I had visitors from 115 different countries. Let me know what dress you’d like me to color and how, Emily!


Mermaid Monday #18: Red Tattered Mermaid Wedding Dress for a Land Wedding

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

For obvious reasons, mermaids prefer thin, delicate fabrics for their undersea fashion statements. These are usually just in single layers, possibly two or three extremely light layers for special occasions or if your situation in life is such that you don’t have to move around too much; anything beyond that registers less as sumptuous and more as vulgar and ridiculous, if not simply dangerous. There is a mermaid fable, in the Aesop vein, about a particularly vain young thing with a pearly pink tail and a fondness for adornment. Despite the warnings of her more practical sisters, she kept adding layer after layer of richly embroidered skirts and tops and sleeves, as well as bangles and necklaces and hair ornaments; in the end her outfit becomes just too heavy and billowy to swim properly in, and she gets eaten by a shark. But then, there is also a mermaid fairy tale about a vain young thing with a pearly blue tail, who starts out with too many layers and sheds them, one by one, to give to others in need; in proper fairy tale fashion, the recipients repay her kindness later on. (From the mermaid point of view, neither story is a caution against vanity per se: the latter is about generosity, the former merely about self-preservation.)

This sleek, light aesthetic often carries over to what mermaids might wear on land. As a matter of fact, most mermaids mentally class humans with other mammals such as dolphins, so it’s only natural to them to consider themselves superior in every way. Because of this perspective, mermaids tend to consider their own style to be obviously better than the fuller, often gaudier fashions popular among human women. Still, sometimes even for a mermaid it’s fun to pile on the fabric. This bride wanted most elements of mermaid wedding gown design for her own dress: the traditional red, the romantic tatters, the bare midriff that would shock most human brides. Indeed the top is such a common design for mermaid wedding outfits that it’s rather cliché. But now that she doesn’t have to worry about sharks, she wanted a skirt with something like ten layers of fabric. The resulting creation looks odd to both human and mermaid eyes alike: the mermaids criticize the mismatch of tatters and heavy skirt, while the humans scorn just about every other part of it. But the bride and her partner adore it, and they’ve never quite been known for paying undue attention to the opinions of others.

The tatters are a long-standing symbol of enduring, patient love among mermaids (and someday, remind me, I’ll tell you the story that most mermaids know a version of that started the trend). Of course, to humans, it just looks ragged and ridiculous. The tailor of this particular outfit took one last look at her beautifully balanced layers of fabric, then actually curled up in a corner of a different room and cried while her apprentice “distressed” the edges.


Mermaid Monday #17: Layered Wedding Gown with Pink Pearls, For A Mermaid-Human Wedding

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

It happens, sometimes, that a mermaid falls in love with a human: maybe with a sailor, a brave seventh son, or maybe a shipwrecked prince. There are some that choose to keep their mermaid form (the houses built by such couples, designed to be comfortable for both sides, are architectural marvels) but many choose to pay a mystic for the spell that will grant them a pair of legs instead. Sometimes the love-struck mermaid forsakes the seas as part of her payment; sometimes she keeps her options open. Wherever the relationship may end up in ten years time, at any rate the wedding that starts it off is always a sight to behold.

I’ve written about traditional mermaid weddings, with their motifs of red seaweed and tattered gowns, but what looks romantic to mermaids just looks ragged to humans. Sometimes the bride will brook no compromise whatsoever, going with a dress that could just as easily be worn for a traditional mermaid wedding, except that it is the length humans expect for their weddings. These gowns will be the traditional bright red and have tattered edges, but they may also have more fabric than is considered practical or fashionable for an underwater wedding, just because the designer can get away with billowing skirts and so on on land. Such gowns are breathtaking, if unconventional to both humans and mermaids. But most such brides harbor romantic dreams of a human-style white wedding dress. (There’s a word in the mermaid language for the oddballs obsessed with human culture: our closest translation might be something like “xenophiliac” or “human otaku.”) As this bride did, they may include red accents or other reminders of the sea, perhaps as a nod to their heritage, perhaps just to keep their mothers happy.

I decided to go back to just the dresses in the thumbnails after all. Thanks, everyone for bearing with my experiment and giving your opinions!

No one has guessed the right answer to my question yet. This time, there are only 365 choices, so it should be possible. (I didn’t get married on Leap Year’s Day — no, that doesn’t count as today’s clue!)
What day is my wedding anniversary?
Post your guess in the comments! Again, the rules:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by 9:00 PM EST, June 9th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.
– Today’s hint: It was in the summer.

This is my second mermaid-on-land dress in a row for Mermaid Monday. Shall I do a proper one with a tail next week, or shall I show you a traditional mermaid wedding dress adapted to land?