When little girls spend their maths classes daydreaming of weddings (instead of winning the World Series — not to point out you will not do both ), what do they dream of first? The perfect marriage dress, naturally : a gown in white satin with a bustle and sweeping train, the perfect embellishments, and the ideal shoes.
Many brides are lucky. They may search high and high, facing chilly department shops and in your face bridal shops, but finally they come face-to-face with The One. They know this is The One as they start crying, or their mummy or friends all start crying instantly. All of the planning …. the theme, the tone, the right kind of venues …. it all springs to life.
Other brides aren’t as fortunate. They’ve searched just as hard, working their way through shops across three or four states, but they have not found The One. Instead, they’ve found three or 4 Contenders, all of which are serviceable and nice, but not earth-shattering enough to tell them that now is certainly time to stop the looking and get on with the planning. These brides have it harder.
Even if you’re the first kind of bride, purchasing the dress is such a momentous decision that you run a likelihood of falling into that wallet-skinning class called the Two-Dress Bride. Here are some tips for picking the perfect dress and avoiding that awful fate.
1. Bring the entourage, but don’t buy. It’s fun and useful to bring your mum, mates or sisters on the dress-shopping expedition. It gives you a buffer against an overbearing sales staff, and it’s entertaining to see whether your impressions of perfection are shared by your loved ones, not to say how they’ll love being an element of such an important decision. But irrespective of how ardent everybody gets over a certain dress, don’t buy in the heat of the moment. Give yourself time to rethink and buy with a cool head later, alone. The vast majority of dresses are non-returnable, so when you’ve bought it, you have bought it.
2. Don’t buy too early unless you must. Bridal gowns can take 4 to ten months from the maker, but there is no reason to buy over a year ahead of time, unless your selected style is going to be discontinued. Give yourself some time to sit on your decision. Once you pick a robe, you can see a hundred others almost like it. You can become a walking encyclopedia on that style of gown. All the better if you still have room to choose.
3. If you’ve bought “The One,” stop shopping. Any more window-shopping at about that point will only lead you down the line toward the dull land of Two-Dress Brides. What you want to do instead is remember that ecstatic sense of having tried on The One. Go get The One out of the closet, put it on and stand before the mirror. You will remember precisely why it is the One.
4. If you have acquired “The One” and can’t stop shopping, get a second opinion. Show your first and 2nd decisions to other brides. Be honest — tell them you have already remortgaged your apartment for the first dress, but you think this second dress might be It. They’ll be truthful, too — the first one was better. You can feel reassured.
5. Don’t tell yourself “I’ll sell the old dress and choose a new one.” This old saw of the Two-Dress Bride just won’t work. You’ll never get more than a fragment of what you paid for your first dress if you bought it new.
6. Don’t be afraid to aim high — regardless of what your budget. Some brides knew from the start they wanted a designer label, but life just failed to cooperate by making them heiresses. Yet all is not lost if you are ready to buy courageously. At any given moment, a better-heeled bride is selling her once-used St. Pucchi or Ulla-Maija on eBay. She paid thousands on thousands, but you, smart patron, will pay half that or less. To take this road, you need to shop earlier than other brides so you will have a choice of gowns.
7. Shop on the web, but never send a check. Bridal robe companies occasionally have a technique of disappearing overnight. Regardless of what the owner tells you, never make a purchase as big a wedding gown without the chargeback protection of a Credit card . If they assert they won’t take plastic, move on.
8. Don’t hold out forever for The One. Some brides never find The One. What they do find is some dresses they look gorgeous in. If you are this bride, try starting your planning from the theme rather than the dress. You will potentially finally get sick to death of dress shopping. When that occurs, “good enough” actually will be good enough. Concentrate on other facets of the wedding that mean a lot to you, like the venue, the food, or the inescapable devotion of your soon-to-be husband.
Need help in selecting the right dress for your wedding day? Visit yourweddinggowns.com to get some ideas about the proper wedding gown for your special day. Browse through some wedding gown ideas to help you select the right dress; you might also want to learn more about weding dresses.
