“My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was five years old. Ever since then, it has been one of my biggest passions in life. In 2017, I started an Instagram account to share pictures of my knitting and launched my own YouTube channel a year later. I’ve recently been sharing tutorials on knitting for beginners,” says Veronika Lindberg. She’s a knitting content creator with 240,000 subscribers. Recently shes’s gone viral for her video her knitting her own afforadable wedding dress.
Based in Helsinki, Finland, Lindberg decided to knit her very own wedding dress from scratch. “In late June, my partner and I decided to get married, and immediately, I thought it would be so cool to knit my own wedding dress and document the experience for a YouTube video, even though I only had about six weeks until our wedding date in September, so I could tell it was going to be a stressful ordeal.” She said.
The idea of an affordable wedding dress seems like a pipe dream, but Lindberg found the challenge exciting, stating, “I felt this had the potential to be the most epic YouTube video ever though, so I ordered 30 balls of white pure silk yarn for roughly $290, and got to work.”
6 weeks to make an affordable wedding dress
The process could not have been easy, but the next 6 weeks of documented commitment became her most popular YouTube video ever.
“Despite being a knitting content creator, I had never knitted a dress before this. I was actually quite hesitant about the concept of it because I worried it would look like a pajama dress and not have any shape to it. “ said Lindberg.
“A lot of knitted dresses I’ve seen look a bit granny-ish, but I wanted something that was more haute couture. So I went on Pinterest and looked up different wedding dress designs from Christian Dior and Chanel, and decided to try and create a dress inspired by those designs, but made from silk yarn.” She said. “I had such a specific vision of it in my mind, and I used an existing skirt I had made to give me an idea of how I wanted it to fall around my hips and legs.”
A challenging 45 days were put in motion
“For the next 45 days, I practically did nothing other than knit. It took me around 200 hours to finish the design, and I had to put all other video ideas on hold while I concentrated on this one project.” She said.
“This was the longest amount of time I’d ever spent on a video, and it was quite challenging having to stay on top of making the dress and remembering to document key moments at the same time. Although I had enough self-belief to feel that I would pull it off in the end, plenty of things went wrong during the knitting process.”
Read: Bride leaves empty seat for her late son, then cries seeing who showed up at her wedding
The first bodice was slightly too big, so she had to start all over again
“About two weeks in, I had finished the bodice but tried it on and found out it was way too big for me. I ended up having to rip it back up and start all over again. When I made the sleeves, they kept slipping down and exposing my chest, so that was pretty funny and took me a while to fix.” Said Lindberg.
“I made sure to film all my mistakes so I could be real and honest with my viewers, rather than only showing them the picture-perfect moments. By the time I finished the dress, I felt so tired and frustrated, and only had four days to rest until the day of the wedding. But when I put it on for the ceremony, I felt such relief, and I could not have been happier with the finished product.” Said a proudly accomplished Lindberg.
The best part must have been her partner’s reaction to the homemade wedding dress
Veronika’s partner was a bit skeptical in the beginning, wondering how such a massive project would ever actually come to fruition. Was there enough time for errors? It turned out that he actually thought it looked great!
Not only was he bowled over, but guests of the pair’s wedding were impressed by such a gorgeous AND affordable wedding dress. “Over the course of the day, guests would come up to me and immediately feel the dress and comment on it. It sometimes felt like they were more interested in the dress than in me, but I love talking about knitting, so I didn’t mind too much.”
“Knitting is such a big part of my life, so I’m glad that I was able to make it an important part of my wedding day.” Lindberg smiled.
Read: Bride Spends Less Than $10 On Wedding Dress: ‘I Still Felt Like A Princess On My Day’
3.3 Million views is no simple feat
Lindberg posted a 46 minute vlog a few weeks later which split up each stage of the making of the affordable wedding dress, with editing alone taking 4 days. With Veronika expressing that “Putting it together was such an emotional experience for me. I was able to relive the experience and my wedding day all over again because of it.”
“The vlog is now my most-watched video with over 3 million views, and I’m glad that spending so much time on producing a longer, higher-quality video actually paid off. I was delighted to see how positively people reacted to it, and that it’s inspired some commenters to make their own affordable wedding dresses one day!(which I definitely think is possible for people with less knitting experience, I would just recommend that they give themselves closer to six months than six weeks!).”
An inspirational message to those in doubt
Lindberg responded to a very mixed response from her followers, stating that “In recent years, knitwear has become fashionable again, with more brands trying to modernize knitting designs for the younger generation, but I think it’s so great that more people seem to want to make their own knitwear and are investing in slow fashion.”
Also making mention that the myths around kitting being what grannies in rocking chairs do to pass time are all nonsense. Proceeding to further state that “It’s wonderful to be able to choose your own materials and produce something affordable that is tailored to your own liking and vision. Knitwear can truly be fashionable, and I hope my story goes a little way in demonstrating that.”
Keep Reading: 2-year-old steals the show at mom’s wedding after running down the aisle to greet her
Sources
- Instagram. Kutovakika.
- YouTube. Kutovakika.
- “I knitted my own wedding dress for $290 and documented the 200-hour process on YouTube to debunk the stereotypes about my craft.” Insider. Charissa Cheong. October 13, 2022.