My Wedding Dress

I got married in the midst of my MA degree. My wedding dress was part of my final dissertation.I wanted to design something that was part of my dual identity of being British and Pakistani.

The dress silhouette was inspired by Victorian dresses with Pakistani embellishment.

The tricky part was creating something that would have a timeless traditional appeal yet keeping a western elegant cut in mind. There was a train behind and the dress was very heavy with the zardozi embroidery.

I even designed my own gold jewellery, which I wanted to be a piece of classic bridal jewellery. I chose to apply my own makeup as I didn’t want layers and layers of foundation.

My wedding dress was copied in a few weeks in Hyderabad. It was painful to see someone making a copy of MY dress which took me a few months to design and was part of my British and Pakistani heritage. But my MA tutor said something that has stayed with me to date.. “Barjis..once you put your design in the market, you don’t have any control”…