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May 30, 2023

Bride Wore Custom Slip Wedding Dress With a Lace Train

In 2015, Sagastiverza attended a dance class with another guy, as she told Insider. Vergaray was teaching the class, and Sagastiverza was immediately drawn to him. "We just hit it off," Sagastiverza

In 2015, Sagastiverza attended a dance class with another guy, as she told Insider. Vergaray was teaching the class, and Sagastiverza was immediately drawn to him.

"We just hit it off," Sagastiverza said. She and Vergaray started seeing each other, and they've been together ever since.

Today, Vergaray is a consultant for a recruiting firm and the owner of a salsa studio, and Sagastiverza works as a social strategist for a creative agency. They live in New York City.

Vergaray proposed to Sagastiverza in September 2021, and they got married on April 1, 2023.

"We had a lot of little jokes on the invite [about the date]," Sagastiverza told Insider. "We were like, 'And this is not an April fools' joke, so if you're coming, please RSVP.'"

The couple decided to have a destination wedding at Villa Santa Cruz in Baja California, Mexico.

"We keep describing it as a beachy fever dream," Sagastiverza said of the wedding. "It was just very, very chill."

"We wanted something really intimate," she added, as there ended up being around 50 guests at the event. Mishka Designs planned the wedding.

Sagastiverza was open-minded about what kind of dress she should wear to her wedding.

"I had so many different options," she said. She tried on ball gowns, other traditional looks, and simple, off-the-shoulder dresses.

The only type of dress she didn't think would work was a slip dress.

"I've tried on so many slip dresses," she said, but none had worked for her. "You have to be like, 5-foot-9."

Les Aimants is a New York-based bridal brand that takes a unique approach to custom wedding gowns, as its founder, Manon Martin, told Insider.

Martin had been working in the fashion industry for years, but she didn't enter the wedding space until 2016 after trying to help a friend find a wedding gown five months before her big day.

Martin told Insider she was shocked by how difficult the process was. Consultants told Martin and her friend that they would have to pay a fee to rush-order a dress given their timeline, and her friend found herself liking the top of some gowns and the bottom of others, though it would cost thousands of dollars to make a fully custom dress.

In addition, Martin was perplexed that wedding gowns that were ordered to a bride's specifications typically still need hundreds of dollars in alterations once they arrived.

"My girlfriend is spending a paycheck on her wedding dress and it still does not fit?" Martin said. "My friend left the store crying."

Martin jumped into solution mode, bringing her friend to her office and designing her dress on the spot using a 3D-rendering software she had. Three weeks later, it was ready.

"When she picked it up, it actually fit like a glove," Martin said. "She didn't need any alterations."

Six months later, Les Aimants was born, a bridal lab that allows customers to pick and choose pieces from different gowns to customize their dream gown in just eight to twelve weeks.

She uses 3D body measuring to create renderings that allow brides to customize their dresses as they are made, ensuring they're perfect for them.

She worked with Martin directly during the appointment, talking to her about her vision for her wedding over a glass of champagne.

Martin suggested she create her dress by mixing and matching the top and bottom of two different gowns.

"I loved that," she said of the option to partially customize her gown.

Sagastiverza was skeptical when Martin suggested she try on a slip dress, but she decided to give it a chance.

The gown had spaghetti straps and a V-neckline with triangular detailing on the bodice.

It cut out under her chest to create an empire waistline, cinching in again at her waist to hug her figure.

The skirt was simple, so it fit the beach-wedding vibe.

As she was looking at the gown in the store, Sagastiverza said she felt like it was missing something.

Martin then brought out a train embroidered with large flowers that could be attached to the dress wherever Sagastiverza wanted.

When Sagastiverza saw the train, she immediately loved it.

"I was like, 'I feel like this is it,'" she said of her reaction to the train.

It also functioned similarly to a veil because its texture was different from the gown, making the look even more bridal.

The train sealed the deal.

Sagastiverza worked with Martin to make the gown backless, attaching the train at her waist for a one-of-a-kind look.

The customization and hands-on attention from Martin made the dress even dreamier for Sagastiverza.

"I just felt like it was really tailored to me, which was the thing that set her apart from every other place that I went to," she said.

The rendering showed Sagastiverza how the dress would look with her specific body measurements, so she was able to make decisions about the gown's details with more confidence.

For instance, Sagastiverza was toying with the idea of adding a slit to the dress, but after seeing the rendering, she was confident she didn't need it.

"I got to see it with a slit and then without the slit, and I didn't know that that was gonna be such a big deal for me," she said.

"The dress itself was perfect," she said. But she said can be indecisive in her day-to-day life, so she was surprised she felt so certain about her dress.

"I second-guess myself a lot with any decision," she said. "So, the fact that I wasn't doing that was pretty surprising for me."

Sagastiverza paired the gown with a loose bun and simple makeup.

"I put it on, and I was like, 'I feel so expensive,'" she said of her reaction. But her dress wasn't as costly as other custom gowns would have been.

"It's crazy because you compare it to other places, and it was actually really affordable," she said.

The customized dress cost approximately $2,700.

"He started crying," Sagastiverza said of Vergaray's reaction to seeing her bridal ensemble, though her dress surprised him.

"He actually said, 'I didn't expect it, but once I saw you, it made so much sense,'" she said of her husband's reaction.

Joselynn Cortes photographed the nuptials.

Salt & Sugar Co. catered the wedding, and Sagastiverza and Vergaray hired saxophone player Samir Zarif to play at the reception.

But they ended up having guitar player and singer Victoria Prince play at their cocktail hour after meeting her by happenstance at their rehearsal dinner, as she was performing at the resort.

The wedding party treated her rehearsal-dinner performance like a concert, and an Instagram Reel about the experience went semi-viral. So Vergaray's groomsmen surprised them by having Prince play at the wedding too.

"She showed up, and I started crying when I saw her," Sagastiverza said. She ended up staying for the entire wedding and celebrating with the group.

The couple loved how much quality time they got with all of their guests.

"We had moments with everyone," Sagastiverza said. "We had welcome drinks and then we invited everyone to come on the beach with us the day before the wedding to just hang out and chill and talk."

"We didn't feel like there was a lot of pressure to meet with everyone the day of the wedding because that day flew as it was," she added. "I was just connecting with a small group of people."

Sagastiverza went shopping with her mom and best friend for a dress before she found her way to Les Aimants, and she came close to buying a gown because of her loved ones' strong reactions to it.

"Literally at the last minute, I was like, 'Wait, I need to think about it,'" she said, and she thinks buying it would have been a mistake.

"That was the first time that I had ever made a decision like that in my life where everyone was on board, and I was the naysayer," she added.

"My advice would be to suss out the vibes and if the vibes are not right, trust your gut and hold," Sagastiverza told Insider. "There's nothing wrong with sleeping on something if you're not 100% sure."

"We're really good at balancing out," she said of her marriage. "When one person is stressed, the other person will come in. We're not bogged down in each other's anxiety and stress."

She also said that Vergaray helps her "approach everything with humor."

"That is totally his contribution to the relationship because I'm very much a worst-case scenario person typically," Sagastiverza said. "The fact that he can come in as my positive counterpart in moments like that is really, really nice and just reassuring."

"I said this in our vows that I know that literally whatever happens, we're gonna be OK because he's the way he is, and it's rubbed off on me," she said.

If you wore an eye-catching wedding dress and want to talk to Insider for a story, get in touch at [email protected].

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