2 lac bridal dress - Lahore

[bellacullen]

Re: 2 lac bridal dress - Lahore

@em2san

Hi everyone,

And thank you for your help.

Just wanted to give a quick update in case other people have the same query.

The dress was not for me but a friend who is getting married quite urgently (mid October) so it needed to be ready to wear.

For her Mehndi dress - saw a sample in Liberty ki galiyaan - it is an Elan replica in olive green with silver and pink flower jaal. Bought the sample from the kaarigaar and as the kapda was not great, got the kaam appliquéd on pure fabric by my darzi in Ghalib market. My darzi suggested a chata patti churidar and also used this churidar as a border for the shirt and dupatta. The kaam shirt and dupatta was PKR 11,000, the pure fabric for the shirt, dupatta, churidaar and lining cost me about PKR 10,000 and the appliqué and stitching cost another PKR 6,000.

Got the Shaadi dress for her from Sana Safinaz - they had an exhibition for formal a right before Eid. It is an extremely heavy shirt in the 1.2 lac range in a maroony plum tone. To complement it, I got her kamkhwab palazzos as suggested by the lady at Sana Safinaz - the shirt is long and assymetrical and the palazzos really look lovely. The cloth for the palazzos was 8,000 and stitching 3,000. She is going to be covering her head with a scarf and carrying the dupatta on her arms so was able to get away with a light(ish) dupatta. Again, the tailor was a genius - he took fabric for two kundan zari chiffon dupattas in the same motif and then dyed them two different colors (so one in maroon, one in plum) he then filled in the blank space in the middle of the kundan zari motifs with machine embroidery similar to the motifs on the shirt and then sowed both fabrics together so the embroidery stitched were hidden and finished with kamkhwab pattis on all four sides of the dupatta. The two tones and the double sides dupatta look amazing and the kaam looks so rich and not like machine embroidery at all! This did cost me about 14k though bringing the grand total to PKR 145,000. I would like to mention that my friend is TINY and that really helped as most designers including Sana Safinaz had their ready to wear or samples in small size only.

For the walima dress, which I requested help for, I was really stuck as her husband to be’s mother had really specific ideas and budget and she wanted her to pair it with her existing dupatta - pistachio green with silver dabka work! I ended up picking a formal shirt from Aisha Imran in a gold organza with gold dabka work which just looked stunning with the dupatta. The shirt was PKR 75,000. For the bottoms, I got a lehenga in a peach tone that really complemented the pistachio and gold - it is in tissue with a jamawar lining of the same color. I didn’t have enough time to get work done on this but as both shirt and dupatta had stones incorporated in the kaam - I got a chan of alternating silver and gold stones on the lehenga. The lehenga fabric was expensive and we needed a lot of it! PKR 14,000 for the fabric and dying, 2,000 for the stone chan and 4,000 for the stitching.

Lastly, as somebody suggested above - the multi brand stores are great for ready to wear. I picked up clothes for her trousseau (and mine too) from PFDC and FPL. I did not like the stuff they stocked downstairs at Tehxeeb but they had an exhibition upstairs that had decent stuff. This is a bit confusing but at 10Q they have two stores - I like the stuff at Ensemble (I think, not sure but it’s the one that stocks Farida Hasan and Sabyaschi, et cetera) but the place next to it was a complete waste of time.

please share the original pic of the elan outfit for mehndi and replica as well. I am getting married next year. Please!