Flower Girl Dresses with Kanzashi Flowers

Flower Girl Dresses with duochrome gold bronze silk dupion Kanzashi Flowers

Whilst I was working on this stunning bronze gold wedding dress, the bride also commissioned me to create two bespoke flower girl dresses for her daughter and her maid of honour’s daughter. She wanted two simple, pretty pre-teen dresses in ivory duchess satin.

I especially loved incorporating the same rose gold silk from the brides dress into the dresses of the girls, giving the wedding a beautifully cohesive look. As well as experimenting with a new technique of making kanzashi flowers.

Photography – Duncan Ireland

It was so lovely that the flower girls designed their own dresses, and using leftover pieces from my dress was a great idea. I hope you have more brides who decide to do that – from my point of view it was worth every penny to have such happy flower girls.

– The Bride

If you want to see the bride’s gorgeous golden dress in more detail, you can here.

The Making Of The Flower Girl Dresses

felicity westmacott design sketch flower girl

The original design I sent to the bride. She was happy with it as a starting point, and in the end, we didn’t change much when it came to the final dresses.

Here you can see part of the process of making these pretty embellishments; kanzashi flowers. Kanzashi is the traditional Japanese art of folding and stitching fabric petals.⁠ This is the tutorial I followed, choosing a 5-petal design. I opted for pearls for the centre – I think pearls look beautiful paired with the shot silk dupion.

Here is the finished dress on the stand. Adorable, don’t you think?

The final dresses had round neck bodice with a natural waistline. I added sashes made of the bride’s beautiful silk dupion, with a neat little bow at the back. I made sure the sweet puff sleeves had a cuff to match the width of the sash – after all, it’s the little details that matter. The skirts were full and hung in folds over netting to give a slightly puffed silhouette, resting at around mid-calf length.

The dresses were fully lined and closed with a concealed zip at centre back.

If you look closely you’ll see that we opted not to have kanzashi flowers on the sleeves, as per the original design. Like Coco Chanel said, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”

Trying on the Dress

With the bride and her daughter standing together, you can see how using the same fabric for the details of flower girl dress is a really lovely way of outwardly showing the beautiful bond between mother and daughter.

If you want your flower girls to feel extra special on your big day, I think giving them creative input into their own outfits is so lovely. And the imagination of children is often really inspiring. ⁠

If you’re looking for more ideas, you can find further examples of my bridesmaid and flower girl dresses here. In particular these dresses that were made using similar orange gold silk. And if you’re already excited to get started, you can book a no-obligation consultation with me.

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Felicity Westmacott

I write about all aspects of weddings, dressmaking, fashion history, and the human relation to clothing. I welcome comments and debate.

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It's giving bridal Sun Goddess 🌞 Just look at that colour!

One of my favourite bespoke wedding dresses to date. I made this opulent bronze gold look for an equally gorgeous bride who wanted something a little different for her wedding day. 

My favourite features have got to be the statement bow on the shoulder and the cartridge pleats around the waist. This style of pleating helped add volume to this unbelievable iridescent dupion silk. Cartridge pleating was popular in the first Elizabethan era and always gives a touch of the historical to any garment on which it's included.

I also included a bustle hook (you can see what the dress looks like up in the last clip), which totally transforms the dress and makes it much easier to move in when it's time to dance!

This is bride was a dream client - elegant and adventurous, with a touch of the dramatic 😉 drop me a DM if you've got wedding dress dreams that you're dying to bring to life!

#weddingdress #ukbride #bespokeweddingdress #bridetobe
I thought it would be fun to see the differences between various bridal petticoats and hoop skirts. Meet the Aurora wedding dress, she's one of my favourites, especially because of the excellent dramatic vibes she gives. So she felt like the perfect dress to experiment with.

The Aurora dress already has some layers of netting built into the dress, so she's already got a bit of volume from the get go. But I wanted to see what difference adding more underlayers would have.

The first addition was a single hoop skirt. Hoop skirts come in all sorts of variations - the single hoop is pretty much what it sounds like. There's a single hoop at the bottom of the skirt, translating into more width at the bottom of the dress.

Then I took off the hoop skirt, and put on a 5-layer petticoat. This thing is a monster! But adds so much more airy, fluffy volume.

The second hoop skirt I tried was a bell hoop skirt. This one has hoops built in all the way up the skirt, creating more of a...you guessed it...bell shape.

And then finally, for the ultimate princess vibes, I tried both the 5-layer petticoat and the bell hoop skirt together. It's giving fairy tale bride, for sure. Perfect for twirling in whilst you dance with your prince, princess or princep.

When ordering a dress from me, talking about what kind of silhouette you want is really useful. And I've got loads of seamstress secrets to achieve pretty much anything you can imagine!

#weddingdress #dipdyeweddingdress #seamstress #pinkweddingdress #princessweddingdress #balloonsleeves
"I cannot begin to put into words how thankful I am that I found you to make my wedding dress of my dreams. The dress was perfect in every way and the colours looked glorious in the Cornish sunshine. Everyone fell in love with the dress and I even got likened to the Porthleven mermaid! It even stood up to rambling down cliffs. You truly are a genius and I can never thank you enough."⁠

Nicola wanted an elegant and figure-hugging mermaid wedding dress made in pale ivory lace. To add colour to her look, she chose a vibrant yellow, orange, red and purple dip dye skirt. 

If you want to see how the dress looked on the day of Nicola's wedding, have a look at my previous post. I love how the colours of the dress really stand out against the dramatic setting of the Cornish coast.⁠
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If you're also looking for a completely unique wedding dress, then you've come to the right place. Starting with your ideas and working together during the entire process, I'll design and make your dream wedding dress. Drop me and DM and let's have a chat!
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Photography - Thomas Frost - @t.frost.photography⁠
Venue - Beacon Crag B&B, Porthleven - @beaconcragweddingvenue⁠
Flowers - Fullers Flowers - @fullersflowers⁠
Hair & Makeup - Amy Needham @amyellenhairandmakeup
emailme@felicitywestmacott.co.ukTEL 07762 543230TOUCHGet in
from design to completionbespoke wedding dressesFelicity Westmacott
Dorking, RH4 1RT241 High Street• Visit the Studio •
Dorking, RH4 1RT241 High Street• Visit the Studio •
emailme@felicitywestmacott.co.ukTEL 07762 543230TOUCHGet in