Truth time: Sometimes we get these engagement sessions and straight-up envy the charmed Instagram-worthy lives the couples seem to live. And Kaitlin and Allan’s shots could do just that. But....
Jeanne-Marie Mark was browsing through Anthropologie when she found the perfect dress for her November 28, 2009 wedding to Steve Roberts. Never mind it was more shower curtain than gown at the time.
“It—the curtain—was so pretty,” says Jeanne-Marie, “and it was just the style I had been looking for in a dress but couldn’t find: soft, feminine, a little vintage and a little different.”
The bride-to-be bought the bath accessory and took it to a dressmaker where she lives in Arlington, Virginia. The two brainstormed over patterns and designs, ultimately deciding on a mermaid-style silhouette with a cascade of ruffles and a shimmery bodice (thanks to supplementary cotton-sateen fabric). After multiple fittings to ensure it fit like a proper gown, Jeanne-Marie says the result made her want “to twirl and skip around like a little girl. And,” she adds, “it totally felt like me.”
The dress—which cost $900 in the end—perfectly suited the homespun wedding the couple threw at Boone Hall’s Cotton Dock, where flowers were tucked into glass jars and wedding pies sat atop antique milk glass stands. And though Jeanne-Marie sent Anthropologie photos of her gown, she never heard back from them. But someone might have noticed—we hear the company’s debuting a wedding line in 2011.
