Wow, I did it: I dyed my wedding shoes!
I ordered (what I thought were) THE perfect wedding shoes in pure white (so I could dye them) for only $30 on Amazon. They're $90 Nina shoes, but Amazon had them brand new for a deal for some reason. So I ordered them and thought about what to do with them for a while.
Many of you advised me not to dye them myself, to let a pro do it. That was good advice. You were right. It would have been better to bring them in somewhere to have someone else do it. But I didn't really know where, and I knew it'd be more expensive than doing it myself, and I am a DIY-er at my core... I geared up to do it myself.
I have dreamed of bright yellow wedding shoes for a while, so I went out and bought the fancy dye, or, the fanciest I could find--iDye for polyester.
I unpicked the stitches attaching the bows to the shoes, and dyed them first to test the dye. I figured, if they don't work, I can put on a contrasting shoe pouf!
I used a big metal bowl on the stove with the dye... stinky!
The bows came out pretty cute! I had to leave them in there a while to get them to take the dye enough--I didn't want pale yellow shoes.
That worked well enough, so I dyed the shoes!! I had to do one at a time since the bowl wasn't big enough for both at once.
And it worked!
It even dyed the buckles a little!
There are a few darker/slightly splotchy places on them, which I imagine wouldn't have happened if a professional had done it. Not too bad, though.
This story doesn't have a happy ending, however. Literally the moment I finished dying these, I realized, "Wait... these won't go with my dress..."
And sure enough, I held them up to my soft grey/ivory/pale pink dress, and... they looked terrible! It makes them look neon, almost, tacky and bad and clashing! What was I THINKING?!!?
So, I'm still on the hunt for wedding shoes. I could dye them again but any processing you do to fabric makes it less nice, and this yellow dye was pretty strong... I'd only be able to make them orange or green or something. Good thing they were only $30!
Thanks, everyone, for your help when I was debating what to do with them. Now we know what happens...
(If you did any other DIYs for your wedding or for a friend or loved one, I'd love for you to share them in the Adventures in Dressmaking DIY Weddings Flickr group!!)