Repurposing Your Wedding Outfit

No piece of clothing will ever match the charm and memories of your wedding outfit. Most of us spent years dreaming of the perfect outfit, and months visiting desi shops before settling on ‘the one’. It’s too bad that after pouring all that anticipation and excitement into the search for the perfect outfit we only wear it once! Have you ever thought about repurposing your wedding outfit?

This summer one of my youngest cousins got married and I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money on Indian clothes, but I also found myself eyeing the box that I keep my ‘shaadi ka joda’ in and wishing I could wear it one more time. For my wedding I chose to wear a pink/purple bandhani lehenga. It was my absolute favourite textile ever and I take it out and look at it all the time. After a bit of hesitation, and a Facebook poll, I decided to take the plunge and update it. 

I started by taking the entire outfit to the tailor and was lucky enough that there was enough fabric in my lehenga to turn it into a kameez. So I still have the dupatta in tact, in case my daughter wants to use it later in life. Then I matched a new fabric with it for the salwar and dupatta. I went with a net fabric that had some pearl embroidery which sort of matched the embroidery on my original lehenga.

repurposing your wedding outfitThis is my original lehenga. (Excuse the poor quality pic, I got married in the pre DSLR age). The funny thing is this lehenga looks very pink in my original pics, but it actually is more purple in real life like the updated pictures show.

Overall I was super happy with how this outfit came out. The only change I would make is to choose a slightly more flowy dupatta. This was a pain to keep on my head at the Gurudwara!
repurposing wedding outfits indian

If you have a special occasion or wedding coming up I highly recommend reworking your wedding outfit into something more current. There are few things you can try:

  • Have a kameez made out of your dupatta and match a salwar or pyjami
  • If you wore a full skirt lehenga, have it slimmed down to a mermaid style
  • Sew a new blouse to go with your lehenga, and maybe add a lighter dupatta?
  • If you wore a sari to your wedding, you have 7 yards to work with and can easily have it turned into a lehenga or a salwar kameez for a change!

The only word of advice I would give is go to a tailor you’ve worked with before, or one that comes highly recommended. If you are in BC, my tailor is called Pink Rose.

If you are looking for a little more remix inspiration, I also re-did my reception lehenga and you can see that transformation here.

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