A bride who spent just £19 on her wedding dress has shown off the gown's impressive transformation after she customised it using recycled fabric and some deeply personal touches.
Maranda Vandergriff got married in late 2020 and took to TikTok to share a video that detailed the process her dress went through from the moment she bought it up until the day she wore it to tie the knot with her husband.
The woman, from the US, said she found the dress in a Goodwill thrift store for $24 (£19.50) before she was even engaged to her now-husband, and decided to pick it up anyway.
When the pair then got engaged, she began working on customising the dress, including cutting off the sleeves and using lace fabric her mum had found in the UK to fashion new puffy sleeves - while keeping the original dress' cuffs.
Get the news you want straight to your inbox. Sign up for a Mirror newsletter here.
In her video, which was posted on her @marandavandy account, Maranda said: "When my husband and I were dating, I found this dress for $24 at Goodwill and fell in love. Even after we got engaged, I knew that I wanted to wear this dress in our wedding, but I wanted to do something special to make it unique.
"My best guess is that this dress is from the 70s and the detailing is absolutely beautiful. I wanted to change out the fabric of the sleeves but keep the cuffs with the detailing that matched the rest of the dress. I combined a few different costume patterns for a custom design.
"My mum found the lace that I would use for the sleeves at a fabric shop in the UK. I stitched the seam through the edge and pulled it to create a gathered effect.
"I pinned the gathered side to the open sleeve hole where I'd removed the stitches and sewed on the sleeves. Then I pinned the original cuff to the other edge of the sleeve and sewed it on as well."
To add a personal touch to her wedding dress, Maranda even decided to sew small beads onto the sleeves which were taken from her mum's wedding dress - which she had also hand-made herself.
She added: "The fabric has a beautiful scalloped edge that I used for an open top but it kind of fell open. For another personal touch I decided to add a beaded enclosure using beads from my mum's wedding dress that she made all herself.
"I didn't want to lose the open effect entirely but adding these little beads on the top created a little bit more structure for the sleeves.
"Here's how they looked once I was finished. And here's how the dress looked on my wedding day."
In the comments, Maranda explained that while she and her husband had also tried to be thrifty with his outfit, they'd ended up buying his jacket while it was on sale and his trousers from high street retailer H&M.
However, the pair did manage to pick up all the bridesmaids' dresses for less than $20 (£16) each.
Maranda said: "We tried to thrift his outfit but ended up getting the jacket on sale and the pants from H&M! Almost all the bridesmaids' dresses were under $20."
And commenters were blown away by Maranda's talents, with many of them stating the dress looks "gorgeous".
One person said: "Wow. Incredibly unique and delicate. It’s gorgeous."
While another added: "Absolutely gorgeous! So much love went into this dress."
Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at yourmirror@trinitymirror.com .
