Here you go...

One self-made dress. Two, actually. The person in the white dress to the left is my best friend from primary school, and that dress she's wearing is her first ever shot at sewing something. I love this girl for spending $250 on the best quality sequinned fabric and silk lining that she could find when she's never sewn clothes before ('well, it wasn't all on fabric - I had to buy thread and a tape measure and pins and all that stuff too. That adds up!). I think we could all learn from her confidence.

I had to blur her face (not something I've ever done before) because she was unhappy about 'being on the internet', and I couldn't crop her face without cropping half my dress. Yep, she reall is that short. Her heels were a lot higher than mine too.

Now, mine. You can pretty much see how it works, even though the metallic thread (and this weird sort of frosted white thread) in the lace reflects back and erases any detail. It's a pretty flattering design, I think. Beware though, it is split up the front to here *indicates a mere couple of inches from the top of her thigh*. The dress and slip have enough fullness to them that one is only at risk of revealing oneself when seated, though. The skirt on the slip follows the same pattern as the dress - the bodice kind of scoops down below your butt, then a short, roughly rectangular panel makes the actual skirt. I really like the line the scoopy-butt-seam makes (yes, I think that is the technical term). Said seam then pulls up towards the ruches at the front (you can kind of see a diagonal line going across my body from my hand to the centre front of the dress?) The slip is completely backless, eliminating any hope of wearing a regular bra. The straps go over the shoulder, then around under the arm to join the front of the slip below the armpit. Yep, that backless.

You can't see it in the photo, but I ended up wearing a little rectangular vintage rhinestone brooch over the ruching. The design looks a little bare without something there, I think (though Badly Coloured Boy always point out that in his opinion it looks like I'm deliberately marking the location of my girly-parts for the benefit of anyone I meet. This observation is possibly the only thing that puts me off this dress).

Colour-wise: The hotel waitstaff had one woman whose job was to go to each table, find the people who pre-ordered vego meals, and note down what they were wearing so the waitstaff delivering the meals could elegantly give everyone the right food without asking who was who. Once Vego-Finding-Lady found me she kind of pulled back looking puzzled - 'Uh... what colour are you wearing?' I told her just to note I was the redhead at our table and she sighed at me and told me that the boy-waiters were too aesthetically ignorant to even identify a redhead (!). She eventually put me down as 'lace dress'.