Bride Tania Jennings has been crocheting since she was a little kid, but had never made anything for herself.
That is, until she took on the laborious and tedious challenge of making her own wedding dress for her June 2015 nuptials at St. Pancras Church in London. In all, she estimates she spent close to 1,000 hours on the garment.
mike@simpleimages.co.uk
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mike@simpleimages.co.uk
Jennings' dress was made of silver satin and was designed by a family friend. The bride then crocheted the purple (her husband's favorite color) and white lace bodice overlay, as well as the lace portions of the hem and train. There were about 150 individual pieces of lace in all, which were webbed together after she had her final dress fitting.
Tania Jennings
The bride, who is originally from Portland, Oregon, was inspired by another woman's crocheted wedding dress she had seen online and decided to take a stab at it herself.
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mike@simpleimages.co.uk
Jennings began making the first pieces in November 2014 and was still putting the finishing touches on the dress just moments before the June 6 ceremony began. The five Polish stars on the train were among the most time-consuming designs, each of which took about 80 hours to complete.
Tania Jennings
One of the Polish stars.
mike@simpleimages.co.uk
Many of the lace designs are tributes to the important people in Jennings life -- flower patterns chosen by her in-laws, an elephant for her daughter Bridgette, a tulip for her daughter Gabby and a martini glass to represent the online game that brought her and her husband together.
“It became a bit of a game at the reception for everyone to find ‘their’ piece," the bride told ABC News.
mike@simpleimages.co.uk
"I spent most of the night before the wedding working on the dress, taking a little nap of an hour or two around 4 a.m. to recharge," she told HuffPost. "I think everyone else was very anxious as my bridesmaids kept asking me how I could be so calm. But for me crocheting is so relaxing that I just had to smile and keep going, knowing that the dress would tell me when it was ready."
When they finally laid the lace bodice over the under-dress, the bride said she was relieved and totally in love with her creation.
"It was so light and flowed into the skirt just as I had hoped," she said. "I was very relieved when at the reception a friend came up to me and said that as soon as I walked into the church, everyone just smiled because the dress was 'me.'"
