Giselle from "Enchanted"

Dana and I have the same favorite movie, a Disney classic, "Enchanted." If you haven't seen it, you truly missing out. It has all the sweet princess magic you would expect from a Disney film, plus wonderful music, and many clever jokes. So it was not a surprise that Dana chose to be Giselle for Halloween. However, she had to pick the most over the top costume from the whole movie for the one she wanted to wear, Giselle's larger than life wedding dress. Here is a picture of the actual dress itself, on display earlier this year in the Disney Store on 5th avenue in NYC. I tried to upload some movie stills here so you could see what the dress looked like on, but the quailty was crappy, so instead here's the link to check them out: http://www.costumersguide.com/enchanted1.shtml

Now that you have seen the real dress, here is my simplified version that I made without a pattern...

I agonized long and hard over the organza ruffles in the front, and (this is for Tiana) finally decided that they needed to be cut on the bias and then sewn vertically to hang correctly. The original dress was made from more than 40 yards of fabric (420 square feet of fabric), and had 3 layers of petticoats and two 6-hoop crinoline skirts underneath, and weighed more than 40 pounds! Dana's version only had one petticoat and a 3 hoop skirt, but they were so heavy for her, she had to wear white suspenders under her dress to hold them up. (You can see them under her dress in some pictures.)

You will notice Giselle holds her hands really delicately throughout the movie. That is what Dana is tryin to do in this picture, with her pinkies out, but it looks more like she's doing hang loose instead.

All the glitter detail you see on the dress are not ribbon or trim, they are actually lines of fabric glue sprinkled with glitter, with the excess shaken off. It was a nightmare to do, I will probably be finding glitter everywhere for years to come.

I didn't do the orchid flower at her waist, because the one I got seemed really too big, and it was very cream compared to how white the dress was. I also had some trouble finding a good set of butterflies for the neckline. After endless hours at various fabric and craft stores, I finally decided to make one out of sparkly foam, and glue rhinestones to it. I skipped the small one all together, and added small bridal flowers on the left instead. You can't really see them very good in these pictures.
Dana's preschool doesn't let the kids do Halloween costumes cause it's just too much trouble, so she went with Nate to his school so she could walk in his Halloween parade with him.

She had an awesome time hanging out with Nate in his 1st grade classroom.

We also got to participate in our Ward's Halloween Carnival.

Everyone had a great time, and Dana loved being able to show off her beautiful dress. The best part, everyone knew that she was supposed to be Giselle, not just a beautiful bride or queen or something.

I was really pleased with how the dress turned out, even though I found traces of glitter in my dishwasher yesterday!