On an ordinary morning off from work, I plop Liana in her high chair while I prepare her bottle and my breakfast and we will sit side by side and enjoy our meals. On this particular morning I was too afraid this would be the last of the warm sun for the season and decided breakfast outside might be nice. I opened the front door to let some air in and the package on the front step caught my eye. I saw that it was addressed to me and I immediately tore it open like a kid on Christmas morning. It was a beautiful dress for my five year old cousin Natalia. A huge grin spread across my face and I began imagining the pictures I wanted to take of her in it.
The dress: Two Tone Satin Bodice Champagne Dress by Sara's Fashion
The top of the dress is comprised of a pale cream tone satin piece that overlaps a champagne satin piece for an elegantly styled sleeveless surplice v-neck bodice. This is met in the midsection with a horizontal strip of champagne satin and pulled together with two voluminous satin flowers, one pale cream and one champagne colored. The flowers are pinned on for easy removal or rearranging. We were debating if we should take some photos with the pale cream flower in her hair and leaving the champagne one, but decided to photograph the dress just as it came. From the midsection, the dress flares out in a ballgown style with a pale cream satin "slip" underneath and two layers of sheer netting flowing over it down to the champagne satin trim at the bottom.
The back of the dress is a single tone pale cream satin with a zipper up the middle and a pale cream cord to tie a bow at the waist.
The Photo Shoot: Natalia Christiana
Fast forward a few days and Liana and I were heading two and a half hours up to New Hampshire to deliver the dress and prepare for a photo shoot with Natalia! My aim was to get a few good shots of the dress because of how gorgeous it was, some candid shots for my blog, and also some portraits that could be used for Natalia's school photos. My model did not disappoint!
Natalia LOVES this dress. She was actually the one who chose it off of the website, even though her Mom and my Mom were both trying to talk her into other dresses. She said it was comfortable, as I can imagine with the satin fabric and soft outer netting. Natalia would normally fit in a dress size 4/5, but we decided to measure her according to the Sara's Fashion sizing charts, just to be sure. It's a good thing too, because according to the chart we ordered a size 4 (the dress tag says 3/4) and it seems to fit her well.
The shoot must have lasted a couple of hours, but I honestly could have snapped photos of her all day. I had some particular poses in mind, but so did Natalia! She says, "okay one like this" and would throw a pose, "and one like this." I think she's been secretly modeling in front of a mirror. Then she says, "I want to do a shy one," and brings her chin down as she curls her arms to her chest and lifts a knee to hide her foot behind her other leg. What the heck? She's five! Where did she come up with this?
When I asked Natalia if she liked the dress, she said it was her "princess dress" and she asked if she could wear it to school. She loves the dress so much, that she had me chasing her around the yard for several hours while she posed for more photos. The shoot went well enough for us to end up with around three hundred and fifty shots! Of course a few were of her little sister Riley, who jumped into her cute Hello Kitty dress when she knew we were taking pictures. Such little cuties Megan and Dan have. :)
What really brought this photo shoot together and made it such a success was this beautiful dress! Sara's Fashion has a wide selection of stunning dresses, but Natalia definitely had a good eye for choosing a dress that is very flattering on her. When I have to buy Liana a dress for formal events in the future, I will definitely start with Sara's Fashion.
If you'd like to see more photos from the shoot, visit my blog again soon. I am going to showcase a good amount of them on one page and put a link in the menu bar above (I'll create a link in this post as well when they are up). I don't want to put them up before Megan sees them and chooses which ones she'd like to use for Natalia's school photos though.
And please, any tips for future photo shoots would be very much appreciated! I'm thinking a Halloween shoot might be in order. :)
** I was not paid to write this review, however, I was kindly offered the product for the purpose of a review. All opinions expressed are explicitly my own, and I would never positively endorse a product unless I truly love and enjoy it.
Very pretty indeed
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