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Bustles are one of the most important aspects of a wedding dress as the dress will be bustled for the entire reception to make it easier for dancing and mingling among the guests.

If you or someone in your circle has some sewing skills you may be able to save some money by sewing the bustle yourself. Please note as in any DIY project the professional will have better results than the DIY, but as a DIYer you can still make a lovely bustle for your special day.

Bustles start by understanding what a bustle actaully is.

The bustle holds up the train with hooks, ties or loops or a combination of all three. Each bustle is different because dress styles are different. With each dress that I alter I try different bustle styles.

Take a look at a few examples from professionals.

How to bustle a wedding dress with an American Bustle — The American Bustle at Tailor Love

When trying to decide how to bustle a wedding dress there are a few factors to think about.

How heavy is the train? If the train has a bit of weight to it you are going to want a number of points to bustle, so that all the weight is not concentrated on one hook or one area of fabric.
Can the hooks for the bustle blend in with the lace, or if the dress doesn’t have any lace, how can you hide the hooks in the dress?

This particular dress had a heavy train. For that reason I did a three point bustle, also I used two hooks for each point just for an extra measure of stability, like this.

The hook and eye sets from amazon come with size 1 and 2 . The size two works better than size one.

As you can tell from this next picture, when the train is down you can see the hooks for the bustle because they are hidden in the lace.

Looking at the close up few you can see the hooks sewn onto the lace but they weren’t noticable from a distance. The main concern is that you don’t want the hooks to show when the bride is walking down the aisle or in the pictures.

Also note that when sewing in these hooks sew through all the layers of material to the underskirt. This is so that when the dress gets bustled all the layers come up with it, and also because the underlining is much more stable than the tulle so sewing through the layers prevents the tulle from bearing the weight of the train.

This dress had a three point bustle, because I sewed two hooks for each point there were a total of 6 sets of hook and eyes.

For the most part there is no right or wrong way to bustle a dress. Be creative. Just make sure you use enough hooks to hold the weight of the dress.

If for any reason you need bridal loop or extra bridal buttons those are also available through amazon

For other alterations on formal wear check out these posts

Also don’t leave without your free gift. If you have been sewing for a while you probably have had times when your machine stitches weren’t catching. This can be so frustrating. Often it is a simple fix, so I’ve created a list of things to check to get your machine running smoothly again