The Wedding Singer

The Wedding Singer opened last night and it's gonna be a hit. I started working on this show almost a year ago. When they announced the 2009/2010 season this was the only show I really wanted to be a part of and I was thrilled when the director requested me to do the costumes.

My first meeting with her was last August, so I've had a lot of time to think about it. Unfortunately they didn't cast the show quite so early so I was somewhat limited as to what I could do. But I did a lot of research and studied the script and worked on some costume plots and ideas.

About a month after my meeting with the director, I had another meeting with both the director and my friend Aly, who was going to be the choreographer. The dancing sounded like it was gonna be awesome and Aly suggested that I audition for the show as well.

So I ended up as costumer and as a principal dancer in the ensemble. Crazy.

This is by far the biggest show I've ever costumed. Not the biggest cast (Spirit of the Iao) and not even the most costumes to build (Sound of Music), but definitely the most costumes overall with some crazy things that needed to be done in/with them.

There were about 45 tuxes, 8 wedding gowns, about 4 quick-changes on-stage, a 12 person stripping sequence, 7 sparkly yarmulkes, 2 stunt doubles, 4 80's iconic couples, 7 bridesmaid's dresses, lots of hammer pants, 7 80's celebrity impersonators, not to mention many other crazy things.

This would have been a lot of work had I just costumed it, but since I was in the show I had to sew around the rehearsal schedule. I probably would have come out of this experience saner if I didn't have a regular job. That would have made things a lot easier.

It is nice to be in a show when you're the costumer. I can't blame anyone but me for what I was wearing (except the bagels, those weren't my idea). It was also easier to understand what needed to be done in the costumes when I could see how all the scenes and dancing actually worked. So there were advantages on both sides to being in the show and costuming it, but I hope I never do this to myself again.

If it were a smaller show with much fewer costumes maybe, but musicals probably not. I think after this I might have to take a season off from costuming...but knowing me I'll be right back at it sooner rather than later.