A bride cut and dyed her wedding dress purple for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, and she doesn't regret it for a second

• Miranda Mendelson totally transformed her wedding dress from 2017 into her Eras Tour look.
• A seamstress hemmed the dress to be knee-length before Mendelson dyed it purple.

This bride is spinning like a girl in a brand-new dress after totally transforming her wedding gown into her Eras Tour look.

Miranda Mendelson (@slashedbeauty) posted a two-part video series on TikTok, which had been viewed a collective 56,000 times as of Monday, documenting how she cut and dyed her wedding dress to create a "Speak Now"-inspired look for the Eras Tour in Los Angeles.

And while some viewers of the video criticized her decision, she told Insider she doesn't regret it for a second.

Mendelson and her friends each chose a different Swift 'era' to inspire their looks

Mendelson, who said she's been a Swift fan since around 2007, told Insider she and her friends scrambled to get tickets for the Eras Tour in November 2022, but, like thousands of others, "got stuck in the Ticketmaster storm with nothing to show for it."

However, they managed to get tickets through a friend of a friend, and started thinking about their outfits for the show, which they're attending this weekend in Los Angeles. Each friend chose a different Swift era to inspire their looks, and Mendelson selected her "Speak Now" album, which was originally released in 2010.

"I immediately knew I wanted to claim 'Speak Now,' as it's one of my favorite Taylor albums that I connected so deeply with at the time it was released when I was a senior in high school," Mendelson said. "This was before we even knew that 'Speak Now (Taylor's Version)' was coming out this year."

On the album's cover, Swift wore a purple strapless dress by Reem Acra. She also wore a purple halter-neck dress by Susan Hilferty during the "Speak Now" tour in 2011. When "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" came out in July 2023, Swift continued the purple theme by wearing another purple Reem Acra gown for its artwork.

A seamstress cropped her dress then Mendelson dyed it herself over a weekend

Mendelson decided she wanted to rewear her dress from her 2017 wedding — with some adjustments. First, she wanted it to be knee-length, so she left it with a seamstress for two weeks.

"I made sure to give her plenty of lead time before I knew I had to tackle the dyeing process," Mendelson said. "If it didn't work out, I'd need to figure out an entirely different plan for my outfit, so I wanted a comfortable margin."

Once she got it back, she dyed it herself. Mendelson told Insider she was "nervous" about accidentally ruining the dress, especially given that when you dye synthetic materials, the instructions say to keep the garment over a stove the entire time at a simmering heat.

"That wasn't gonna happen with how bulky the dress was," she said. "Luckily, I live in Las Vegas where our tap water can get pretty hot in the summer — and also added some boiling water to a large bin — and crossed my fingers it would work out."

The dyeing process only took about an hour and a half, but she allowed the dress to dry completely overnight before trying it on. It now features a dark purple bodice covered in floral lace, with a skirt in a lighter hue and a white top layer.

"Even though there were some surprises — the top layer of the skirt ended up staying white — I was pleasantly surprised with the results and I actually liked the variation I got in color," she said.

She's also debating putting a few final touches, like butterfly embellishments, on top of the dress.

In response to criticism over transforming her wedding dress, Mendelson said she has no regrets

Her videos have also been viewed 422,000 times on Instagram and over 1 million times on Facebook, but not all the viewers supported the transformation. Some people on Instagram criticized the move, with one commenter saying the video "should be a tutorial on how to mess up your wedding dress."

But Mendelson says she has no regrets.

"Personally, I find it much more special that I can continue to wear this dress, and add to its sentimental value through upcycling and rewearing it versus storing it away to collect dust," she said.

She added, "Dyeing and shortening it doesn't get rid of any of the sentimental value for me. It's still what I wore on my wedding day, except more functional for me at this point in my life."

And she hopes the dress will get another life after the Eras Tour. She said if she outgrows the dress, she plans to donate it to underprivileged teens in need of homecoming or prom dresses.

"It'll continue to be someone's special dress," she said.