Sophia Bush had 'personalised' floral wedding gown
Sophia Bush's wedding dress featured pictures of her own bees.
The 40-year-old actress tied the knot with Grant Hughes in Oklahoma last month and right from when the couple got engaged in Italy last year, the former 'One Tree Hill' star knew exactly what she wanted her bridal gown to be like.
She explained: "From the moment we got engaged, I knew what I wanted my dress to be.
"I’d seen a photograph of a Monique Lhuillier dress taken on Lake Como, and I had a vision of creating a personalised version of it, in what I have always thought of as a heritage print: a print of flowers from California, Oklahoma, and Italy, to honor the heritage of our families—where we come from and how we are all coming together to map where we are going.”
Sophia FaceTimed with the designer herself, and Monique was delighted to work with her on the dress.
The gown featured a print of peach Oklahoma tea roses, orange California poppies, green and black Italian olives and butterfly ranunculus, and images of Sophia and Grant's bees were scanned to be placed among the flowers, with the insects having special significance to the couple because creating a beehive was their first project together as a couple.
The gown was simply accessorised with diamond floral earrings from Briony Raymond New York and Sophia's engagement ring.
She told Vogue.com: "The dress didn’t need anything else. We finished the look with a pair of Monique Lhuillier heels in a perfect shade of pale, peachy pink.”
After the ceremony, Sophia changed into a second dress, a strapless ivory gown with detachable trian, which she and her stylist Kevin Michael Ericson had worked with designer Emilia Wickstead on.
The actress said: “My gown was exquisite but also took up a lot of space, and we had dancing to do!
“So Kevin and I worked with Emilia Wickstead to create the second dress. She has long been one of my favorite designers, and I had just worn her to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
"We sent her imagery of my Monique gown, and she sourced an incredible floral brocade silk to line the inside of my waist cape, to iterate on the floral theme.
“And we dyed a pair of satin Jimmy Choo heels to match the ivory shade and stitched two matching brooches from Beladora Jewelry—sewn on by Grant’s best man!—to the corners where the cape attached to the back of the gown. Matthew had taken my hair down for our first dance, and we let it be for the change.”
And at the afterparty, the bridge changed again, this time donning a Cristina Ottaviano minidress and ivory and silver cowboy boots so she could dance until 5am.
She said: “I felt very country-western glam!”
