economie

A bride spent 14 months designing custom bridesmaid dresses for her ‘Bridgerton’-inspired wedding

July 20, 20240
Lee with her mother on her wedding day.

Jennifer Lee

Lee was a competitive ice skater from 6 to 16 and worked with her mom to create costumes for her programs.

“When I first started ice skating, a lot of the outfits that I wanted didn’t really exist. If you wanted something that was really elegant and showed great movement and grace, it was meant for Olympic skaters,” Lee recalled.

“My mom taught me how to help her create these costumes to make our programs come alive,” she added. “I have the most fond memories of staying up late with my mom, bedazzling crystals on my dress in hopes to really glimmer in competition.”

When Lee went to UCLA, she joined the university’s fashion club to keep learning new skills and techniques while pursuing a degree in bioengineering.

“I designed four collections in four years for our annual fashion show and, through that, kind of honed my craft,” Lee said. “This was before YouTube, so I would take patterns from Joann Fabric and reconstruct them to create different garments. I learned how to pattern through that.”

Lee’s designs took a backseat as she pursued a career in cosmetics innovation. But after getting engaged, she dusted off her old sewing machine.
Lee with her bridesmaids in their custom dresses.

Jose Villa

“I was called the bag lady for probably 14 months leading up to my wedding,” she said. “I would show up to work with a wheelie bag filled with patterns and fabric.”

Nearly every night after work, Lee would head straight from her office to the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she’d sew or make patterns from 6 p.m. to midnight. She approximates that the materials for each dress — all made with small-batch fabric — cost around $500.

“I didn’t always get it right, too,” she added. “So there were times I’d have to get new fabric and start over and figure it out.”

The dresses were inspired by “Bridgerton,” which fit perfectly with the venue’s garden setting. But Lee didn’t want them to be traditional.
Lee stuck to pastel colors so her collection would still feel cohesive, even with mixed fabrics.

Jose Villa

“Every time I flew home to plan the wedding, I would pack my muslin samples and different fabrics so I could shape and make sure the fabrics complemented their different skin tones,” Lee said.

Lee also had to learn to make edits on the fly as some of her bridesmaids became pregnant or new moms.

“It meant so much to me to get the fit right and make sure that they felt comfortable,” Lee said. “My friends have been there for me through the ups and downs of a long-distance relationship and all the heartbreaks before I met Brian, so it was important to me that they loved the dresses.”

The bridesmaids’ custom getting-ready outfits were also part of Lee’s 26-piece wedding collection.
Lee in her custom Galia Lahav tea ceremony dress.

Jose Villa

Head designer Sharon Sever had never made a tea ceremony dress, but Lee said he was elated by the idea.

“Sharon is a visionary; it was just so seamless,” Lee said. “He sketched up a beautiful drawing of me in a red dress, and I knew at that moment it was going to be the dress that I wore for the tea ceremony.”

And Lee knew she wanted to walk down the aisle in a Monique Lhuillier gown.
Lee’s bridesmaids during the wedding ceremony.

Jose Villa

“I was filled with every type of emotion; it was just amazing to see them all lined up together,” Lee said. “It was this moment of, ‘I can’t believe I’m walking down the aisle right now to my husband,’ and it also felt like a very euphoric moment of, ‘I can’t believe I did all this.'”

“When I told people I was making my bridesmaids’ dresses, they looked at me like I was crazy,” she added. “So I was like, ‘Wow, it really came together.’ I felt super accomplished.”

One of Lee’s favorite memories from the wedding was the Chinese tea ceremony.
Lee and Shea during their first dance.

Jose Villa

“I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to dance in the dress, but when the time came, the dress moved with me,” Lee said. “It was one of our first moments as husband and wife, and it just felt like I was floating.”

Lee danced the night away in a custom sequin Monique Lhuillier dress and pink-and-silver Nikes that she had upcycled to match.
Lee and Shea in the custom robes she made as part of the wedding collection.

Jose Villa

After Lee jumped into the pool in her dress, she and Shea put on their after-party robes, decorated with the words “And they lived happily ever after” on the back.

Lee loved designing her wedding collection so much that she launched a fashion brand.
Lee said her wedding helped reignite her passion for fashion design.

Jose Villa

Lee has made time to sew every single week since her wedding and now takes custom orders through her brand, Esque. She describes it as a “haven for fashion-forward tastemakers seeking to stand out from the crowd with wearable, runway-worthy pieces.”

And Lee doesn’t think she’ll ever take a break from fashion design again.

“When you have this passion, it finds a way,” she said. “It bubbles up to the surface no matter what you’re doing, no matter how old you are. Now that it’s been reignited, I can’t stop.”