I love featuring brides who wore a J.Crew dress on their wedding day. And it’s always a treat to see the Daphne dress!
A reader named Tory recently left a comment in the post, “The Coveted Daphne Wedding Gown.” She writes:
Back in April, [another reader named] Dearbhla mentioned on this blog that she was selling her Daphne dress on eBay–and I was the lucky one who got it (and wore it July 25 for my small Connecticut wedding)! For those of you out there looking for it, it’s true–it’s just lovely. However, there are a few “surprises”: it’s a stiffer material than I had expected (thanks to the silk organza), the very full skirt can be difficult to take in (especially if you want to keep the pockets–and I did), and it can be see-through on a sunny day (so my seamstress added an extra liner). With all that being said, the dress is incredible and I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to wear it! Good luck to all the searchers out there…
I contacted her to share her story about wearing the beautiful dress. Tory was also kind enough to share photos featured in the slideshow above.
Do you love this dress, too? The Daphne is currently available on eBay in a size 4. See item number .
See Tory’s story after the jump.
When my brother got married four years ago, I was more than surprised to hear that my sister-in-law’s wedding dress had been purchased from J. Crew. Knowing nothing about the wedding line, I assumed that she had simply purchased an average—albeit lovely—J. Crew beach dress. Clearly, I had a lot to learn!
By the time my own engagement turned into an actual wedding date, I had just five months to get ready. Knowing my wedding would be a tiny affair in the beautiful countryside of northwest Connecticut, I wanted a simple, easy dress. As I considered various J. Crew wedding dresses from the current season, I simultaneously kept my eyes peeled to the JCrewAholics blog. Like so many girls before, I’d fallen in love with the Daphne dress, and I crossed my fingers that someone wanted to sell it. Within a month, I got lucky! The dress appeared on eBay, and I snapped it up. Not knowing my exact size (I’d lost 30 pounds since the engagement), I hoped for the best. What happened was far from it.
When the dress arrived on my doorstep, I opened it with great delight. Sadly, within minutes, I was tearfully dissolved in the middle of the room. The dress was far too big in every way and made of a rougher material than I had anticipated (silk organza), and I seemed swallowed up by the dozens of pleats I thought I would love so much. And yet this was my only option: I had purchased it without trying on a single other dress.
Rather than take you through the trauma of the weeks that followed, I’ll simply fast forward to the day I met Liz Belfi, a phenomenal seamstress with her own shop in Oakland, NJ. She, too, loved the dress, and she could see what I could not. For weeks, she painstakingly disassembled and reassembled the dress, shrinking it by two sizes while also using the extra length to create a tiny train. She even added an extra liner and a button at the top due to my concerns about undergarments showing! By the time I’d added the headpiece from my mom’s veil, it was clear that my instincts were right: the Daphne was it.
I couldn’t have been more comfortable or felt more effortless on my July wedding day. The dress was cool, easy to move in, and never required readjusting; not once did I have to tug anything up—or down! All the guests of my parents’ generation loved the traditional feel of the dress, and all of my friends found the vintage look totally unique. As for me, the comfort of the dress put me so at ease that I was able to bask in the joy of the day with the man I adore. If I could, I’d wear it every day!
For more wedding stories, see the following posts:
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Red Lipstick says: 
Anna 
