There is a mantra for modern fashion: "It's all in the details." Never is that more true than for a wedding dress. From a train flowing down the aisle with a cascade of frills to a bodice sprinkled with a row of gentle tucks, a few ingenious details can transform a basic silhouette into something truly special.

When searching for your perfect wedding gown, you probably envision the overall effect: sleek and simple or traditional and romantic. You're not likely to walk into a store and ask to see something with lots of tucking, banding, or festooning. But knowing just how these techniques affect the fabric will give you a better understanding of how a bodice will fit, a skirt will fall, a sleeve will drape.

Take the seam. It might be just a simple line of stitches joining two pieces of fabric together. But when bugle beads trace the curving arcs of an Empire gown or piping follows the seams, even a slip of a dress can become poetic.

The most familiar additions to a wedding dress are the flounce and the ruffle; these pieces of material give a sense of volume and motion. Like surf breaking over the ocean, frills of chiffon, lace, or broderie anglaise will create wavelike layers that ripple as a bride progresses toward the altar. The deeper flounce fulfills all sorts of bridal fantasies, whether it is a "Shakespeare in Love"-style fullness at the sleeve or a "Carmen"-inspired gypsy skirt with flamenco frills.

Even fancier is the festoon, a drape that hangs from two points. These swooshes of material can look delicious when worked on a skirt with garlands of silken flowers or with a rose whorled at the stitch points. Festoons are especially effective in a thick, malleable double-cream fabric such as satin charmeuse, or with the spotted voiles that a century ago might have been used to create panniers or bustles.

Of course, decorative details don't have to be frilly and girlish. You can become a neoclassical bride in swaths of fabric. This look is quite elegant with a cowl neckline or a swoosh of material that crosses the bodice of the dress or the skirt on the bias. The beauty is in the simple, slender line, echoing the graceful symmetry of statues and columns in a grand reception hall.

The most modern dresses are likely to have details that control the fabric and shape it to the body. A popular built-in decoration is the tuck, which is a straight fold of fabric that can be treated in a variety of ways: vertical or horizontal; tiny, symmetrical folds; folds created in clusters; or even a series crisscrossed into a checkerboard. No matter what the pattern, these folds work best when used in stiff but fine materials like cotton lawn or silk shantung. Although such details are usually created with straight lines, they can also be sewn with shell-stitched edges to create a scalloped effect on sleeves or at hemlines. And tucks are a wonderful device for adding volume to a skirt -- just a few set into a seam can create a graceful flow of loose folds.

The pleat is an open tuck used lengthwise as a fold of fabric that falls vertically. And though a pleated skirt might be unusual for a wedding dress, variations in wispy, fragile fabrics can create a romantic mist at the wrists or ankles. Banding is a practical way to create a well-fitting silhouette. It uses horizontal strips of fabric sewn together -- appropriate for a full bosom or to form a whittled-down waist.

Banding can be done in most fabrics, from classic silks and satins to light organdy and chiffon, and even the most modern stretch materials.

For a more voluptuous outline, you can turn to the needlecraft techniques of smocking and quilting, which have been revived as part of the new emphasis on sophisticated peasant looks. Smocking is the stuff of garden weddings -- those "Midsummer Night's Dream" events. Charming on chiffon or any gauzy material, smocking can be used right across the bodice or just as a decorative edge to short or long sleeves. Quilting is perfect for a winter bride. With all the warmth and lightness of a duvet, quilting is created with running stitches forming decorative patterns as they join together two thicknesses of fabric with padding between them. Sumptuous in duchesse satin or velvet, quilting also looks grand on a deep hem.

Because so many of the different needlework techniques are subtle, they can be combined to bring together frills, tucks, and drapes in a single wedding gown. Their effects may be different, but all of these techniques have one thing in common: They allow a dress to look simple and streamlined until the eye picks out those all-important details.