Lace Wedding Dresses

Custom Lace wedding dresses from Wilden London are made using the best quality silks from Mills in England and Europe.
There are many types of lace, which can be used in different ways to create a custom look, completely unique to your bespoke wedding gown and perfectly flattering and enhancing to your figure.
Lace most typically features floral designs, with swirling and repeated pattern motifs. Wilden London incorporates couture embroidery techniques to use lace and combinations of different lace in ways that are modern, and fashion-forward and creating a fabric unseen before.

Custom Lace Fabrics and Embroidery

For bespoke lace wedding dress designs I will most often create my own custom lace fabrics to specification.
This can be achieved in two different ways depending on the requirements of the bespoke dress design.

Entirely bespoke lace fabric designs can be created from scratch. (By definition embroidery on tulle is a lace, alongside other lace-making techniques).
This option is most suited when you have a very specific idea about the type of motifs that you want within your lace wedding dress design that is not available on the fabric market.
Typically, lace is often found in floral motif designs, but what if there’s not a lace with a particular flower that’s very special to you, or you want favourite birds to feature? The possibilities are endless. I’ve created French wildflower lace designs, re-created vintage lace where we didn’t have enough - and couldn’t get more, and pet dogs and rabbits have featured too.

I can combine several different lace fabrics together using a tulle or a fine Chantilly lace as a base, and then carefully cut out lace motifs from other specially selected laces which may also be fine lace, but could also be bolder or even beaded and embellished lace motifs, which are embroidered together in a layout that is perfect for the bespoke lace wedding dress design being created. This exact technique was used to create the bodice of Kate Middleton’s Wedding dress by Alexander McQueen and Sarah Burton
There is of course the extra option to further embellish the custom lace fabric with beads, sequins, threads and embroidery. As you can see from the example images above, the combinations and possibilities on lace wedding dress design and style are endless!

Vintage Lace

It’s wonderful to use vintage lace for a bespoke lace Wedding dress, there are so many styles rarely created today. You may have a beautiful antique lace family heirloom, or you may have found some wonderful designs at a textile market. But there’s often an obstacle - there’s not enough to create your wedding dress design.
We can piece together several pieces of lace, old and new, into a new and cohesive lace design for your wedding dress, or we can recreate extra lace based on the original antique design.

Chantilly Lace/ Calais Lace

What most Brits think of as Chantilly Lace, is in fact Calais Lace. But for the sake of not confusing people too much, I still use “Chantilly Lace” in most of my descriptions and language. In short, Chantilly lace and Calais Lace share a very fine and delicate quality, however true Chantilly lace is uniquely produced only in the colour black. I suspect, because of the beautiful surroundings of Chantilly, Brits thought it more whimsical and appealing to label the similar Calais lace after the Chantilly Town. Chantilly is also twinned with Epsom, where my main atelier is - so I feel quite romantically inclined towards the idea too!

Calais Lace originated in Nottingham, England, but then some machines were smuggled to France and some Brits set up in Calais to make it easier to transport all over Europe.

Chantilly Lace, then, is characterised by a fine and sheer background, what appears as an outline of intricate details and appear subtle from afar. Because is is fine and lightweight, it can be used in a full and flowing skirt, but equally, as a delicate background for a bodice for heavier lace to be embroidered on top of.
I often applique Chantilly Lace motifs under sheer fabrics such as silk chiffon or tulle to create a very soft and hidden effect.

Guipure Lace

Guipure Lace, also called Venetian Lace, does not have a background tulle, instead the embroidered motifs are connected by embroidered threads. Guipure laces are often very bold in detail - vert striking and unusual, and more likely to be found in modern geometric designs, but floral lace designs are to be found too.

I have made full Guipure Lace Wedding Gowns, however I most often cut Guipure Lace fabric into individual motifs, and place, applique and re-embroider the lace onto the figure in an enhancing body contouring design. It’s quite a thick texture compared to most other laces.

Alençon Lace

Alençon Lace, is sometime simply called French Lace and a needlepoint Lace, which means that it has a fine tulle background, and delicate motifs - most often flowers - are embroidered onto the tulle. It is similar to Chantilly lace, except that motifs appear filled in, rather than outlines only.

For bespoke lace wedding dresses, I sometimes combine Chantilly lace and Alençon to be able to create a delicate overall feel, with some highlighted sections.

Raschel Lace

Rachel Lace is a knitted lace, which makes it very supple, soft and drapey with a slight stretch. It’s appearance can be quite bold, and all motifs appear filled in. There’s a wide range of designs from floral to geometric. It can be used in a similar way to Alençon lace to create a highlighted lace design on the figure if the design is right, but it’s best suited to all-over and semi-figure hugging designs.