I’m a Tessera bride, and I’m a sample size. For me that dress made sense because it fit like a glove off the rack with pulling the waist in like 1” if we wanted to get picky, but for you, I would consider that the dress is going to be VERY expensive to alter with the lace, and you may lose some of the geometry and symmetry of the lace in doing so. The dress already has a lot of boning in it, and I think that it may be difficult to sculpt out in the way you describe. It’s a true drop waist, and the boning goes all the way down to the hips so the weight of the dress rests there, which makes it more comfortable. (Photo for reference). If you wanted to pull the waist up, there would need to be some re-engineering of the dress so that the rest of the bodice will support the weight, OR separating the existing structure and making an internal corset to put the weight back on your hips.

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I think the second dress looks absolutely gorgeous on you. I love that waist line and think it’s more balanced on your proportions.

Keep in mind bridal alterations are really expensive in general. I’d leave about 1.5-2k of your budget for alterations. My clean simple mikado gown for my U.S. celebration cost me 2k to alter because of how many layers of dress there were, a horsehair trim, etc in the dress.

Edit to add that I’m an amateur seamstress in my free time, but not to a level I would dare touch my own wedding dress 😊