Jasmine Sky has been custom designing tropical wedding dresses made of luscious hand painted silk for over 14 years. She’s worked with hundreds of brides, helping each one create the dress for her destination beach wedding that will best express her unique beauty and style personality. She also creates their wedding party’s attire and fabulous island honeymoon resort wear.

Every dress she’s made has been a transformative piece for not only the bride but for herself, too, as she completely tunes into her customer’s every need and desire to help them discover exactly what they want — and then makes it for them in hand-painted, custom chosen silks to express their unique beauty and style personality.

But there is really no dress like your own wedding dress— and Jasmine recently had the experience of making one just for herself. So, what exactly does the dress of a unique wedding dress designer look like?

Her Dress: The Eleganza Makes Its Debut

CRICKET: The pictures are stunning & you look totally radiant and beautiful. Can you explain your dress to us- what dress it is, what silks you used, how you wrapped it, what your painted & what colors you chose?

JASMINE: I chose one of my new styles, Eleganza. Eleganza has a very sleek silhouette of a wrap around skirt with and a built in train and her top that can be wrapped in 5 different necklines so I knew I’d have plenty of opportunity for spontaneity because of her versatility.

I ended up wearing her in a choker halter neckline. I added a bit of drama with a body veil just draped down my back. I wanted this accent but I also wanted to be prepared with a shawl in case of a chilly evening.

CRICKET: How long in advance did you plan your dress design?

JASMINE: I chose my dress style and started designing my silk textile immediately after choosing our date, Christmas Eve. It was only 2 months away! I was ordering custom designed pearls so I couldn’t have them designed until I knew what I was wearing.

CRICKET: How did you choose the style you chose?

JASMINE: I knew I wanted a train and to dress to the max for this ceremony. I believe that a bride can never be overdressed for her wedding so, although I didn’t want the ceremony to be formal, I wanted a full bridal look – non-traditional – but full regalia. I am a big fan of dressing up – duhh!! For me the two most important aspects of my wedding was that the focus be on the sacred ceremony and that Terry and I be dressed to the nines and 100% comfortable.

Terry wore a linen suit with his silk Aloha shirt painted to match my dress along the borders with a central back image.

Textile Inspiration: Poinsettia Power

CRICKET: And your textile choices…talk to us about them.

JASMINE: I wanted to be Christmas incarnate! At Christmas time I crave to have red all around me. I love getting lots of poinsettias to decorate the house with and hang lots of small white lights. So it was only natural for my textile design to be poinsettias.

I love wearing red, white and gold at Christmas time but fuchsia is MY color so I combined the two with the fuchsia predominating with accents of red and key lime. It was a tropical Christmas palette and VERY energizing!

I kept the background white but knew that I was going to COVER the silk with poinsettias so only a bit of the white would show.

CRICKET: How long did it take?

JASMINE: It took a solid 2 weeks to paint!!

CRICKET: Did you change your mind on any details along the way?

JASMINE: Nope. Sometimes that happens but it didn’t this time.

CRICKET: How did you know when it was done?

JASMINE: When I had covered as much of the white as possible!

Silk Tropical Wedding Dresses: What Dreams Are Made Of

CRICKET: Every woman I know has envisioned their dream bridal gown at one point or another. Is it the dress you always dreamed it would be?

JASMINE: It doesn’t work that way with me. Since I know how to sew, I can have anything I want.

As I move through life my expression changes and so I don’t get fixated on one version of a dream dress. I’m always wearing my dream clothing. The occasion and location play a huge role in choice of style and art wear and color.

Our engagement lasted a year and a half. I was in no rush to ‘tie the knot’. I wanted to dream about all the different ways that I could ‘tie the knot’ and what is such a trip is that I NEVER dreamed I would get married in the winter! I’m a summer person. I love the islands in the summer. So I had a zillion ideas in the year and a half that we were engaged. Only 1 of those dreams was a candlelight ceremony. So the morning I woke up saying, “We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to ‘make this official’,” the next thought in my mind was “Christmas Eve, by candle light, in the church after their last Christmas service.”

CRICKET: How did you FEEL in your dress?

JASMINE: Fabulous. Just fabulous. Totally comfortable and TOTALLY elegant. I love the color combo and the weight of the train. I felt like the ‘Christmas Queen’.

A Dress to Remember, and Wear Again and Again…

CRICKET: Do you think you’ll wear it again? Tell us a little about the “second life” potential your custom silk wedding dresses have.

JASMINE: I can’t wait to wear it next Christmas Eve for our first wedding anniversary!!! It’s going to be my Christmas Eve dress. Perhaps I’ll add elements to it as the years go by but it is filled with such incredible memories now that it is even more charged up than when I put it on that night!!
I didn’t design my dress as a dress that I would wear for other occasions in my life. I’m spoiled. I can make whatever I feel like wearing whenever I want. But that is a really unique option that is available for other brides just because we are building her dress ‘from scratch’ so to speak.

If you are making a large investment in your wedding dress you want to get the most for your money. So you look for ways to be able to incorporate your dress into your wardrobe for other occasions. So we plan that into the style and textile designs.

For instance, for the style changes, it could be something as simple as giving a strapless dress straps or making a new dress out of the train. For the textile design we can do things like keeping the background white with just a little color for the wedding and then adding more hand painting or dyeing after the wedding to change it’s look completely. These are all very unique to each woman and her needs and wants and it happens really organically as we design the dress.

 

Love and New Life: The Miracle of Christmas

CRICKET: Talk to us about your vision for your wedding ceremony.

JASMINE: My vision, firstly was that the focus be on the ceremony, not the reception. Because it was Christmas Eve and planned so last minute, we ended up not having a reception at all. Christmas Eve is such a family night that we knew it would prevent a lot of our invited guests from coming. But I was dead set on Christmas Eve. Come Hell or high water, I was getting married on Christmas Eve. It’s always been such a magical night for me.

Secondly, it was my vision to have the entire ceremony by candlelight. I wanted the intimacy and energy that candlelight brings.

And thirdly, It was my vision that our guests were our bridal party and that the wedding wasn’t a ‘performance’. I didn’t walk down the aisle. No one ‘gave me away’.

We thought we might do the ceremony on our dock but we decided on the church sanctuary as it was winter and we didn’t want the extra hassle of having to prepare for windy, cold or rainy weather.

CRICKET: What was your favorite thing about the ceremony?

The candles and the rain that blessed us were extra special. In the Hindu and yogic traditions, rain symbolizes that God has heard your prayers and is blessing you.

Right at the very beginning of our ceremony we were ritualistically lighting our candles as a singing bowl gong was being sounded. It was during this ritual that the heavens opened up and the ‘blessing of the waters’ came resoundingly down on the cathedral ceilings of the sanctuary! My heart leaped up within as as I closed my eyes and out loud said, “it’s raining!”.

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