Many women dream about the dress they’re going to wear on their wedding day, but far fewer envision designing their gown for the special occasion. “For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of designing my own wedding clothes,” bride and clothing designer Krésha Bajaj Zaveri admitted in a blog post. She finally got her chance this past February when she wed Vanraj Zaveri at The Leela Palace in Udaipur, India. Practicing a traditional Indian ceremony, the celebration featured a lot of wardrobe changes, including one outfit that was the most striking of all: a lehenga—a long skirt—that she embroidered with their love story.
The show-stopping piece reflected both tradition as well as Zaveri’s need to push the proverbial design envelope. “I’m not very conventional in my ways,” she explains, “and so a traditional Indian wedding wasn’t something I had ever envisioned.” (Her now-husband is the traditionalist in the relationship.) Still, she embraced this type of wedding and was determined to create garments that spoke to her aesthetic. “My kind of Indian is a little different, edgy and maybe even weird compared to the usual norms of the market.”
Designing all of the outfits under her brand Koesch, she crafted her wedding lehenga as an unconventional canvas for a beautiful story. The embroidery, clad in white with gold thread and accents, features the couple’s milestones, proposal, and other important moments leading up to their wedding. “I used traditional embroidery techniques and materials, and all around the lehenga you will see hidden elements sewn into the garment,” Zaveri explained on her Instagram. The couple’s names are embedded in the skirt—disguised as a chevron pattern—and it’s finished with a hem of jumping dolphins. “[It] was the beginning of our story,” she wrote, “as we worked together on a protest against cetacean captivity.”
Knowing that she’d only wear this dress once, Zaveri found a fantastic way to display her handiwork and remember the magical day—she framed it like a piece of artwork and hung it on their wall.
Here are some other photos from the beautiful nuptials:
Krésha Bajaj Zaveri: Instagram
via [The Huffington Post]
All images via The House of Pixels.
