When tiny girls spend their math classes daydreaming of weddings (instead of winning the World Series — not to say you can’t do both ), what do they dream of first? The perfect wedding dress, naturally : a gown in white satin with a bustle and sweeping train, the ideal elaborations, and the ideal shoes.
Many brides are fortunate. They may search high and low, braving chilly department shops and pushy bridal shops, but eventually they come face-to-face with The One. They know this is The One because they start crying, or their mummy or friends all start crying at once. Suddenly the rest of the planning …. the theme, the tone, the right kind of venues … It all springs to life.
Other brides are not as lucky. They’ve searched just as hard, working their way thru shops across 3 or 4 states, but they have not found The One. Instead, they’ve found 3 or 4 Contenders, all of which are serviceable and nice, but not earth-shattering sufficient to tell them that now is definitely 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, buying the dress is sort of a significant call that you run a likelihood of falling into that wallet-skinning category called the Two-Dress Bride. These are some tips for picking the ideal dress and avoiding that awful fate.
1. Bring the entourage, but do not buy. It’s fun and helpful 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 fun to see if your impressions of perfection are shared by your family, not to mention how they will love being an element of such a crucial call. But regardless of how avid 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 overwhelming majority of dresses are non-returnable, so when you have acquired it, you’ve bought it.
2. Don’t buy too early unless you must. Bridal robes can take 4 to 10 coming months from the maker, but there is no reason to buy over a year previously, unless your selected style is going to be abandoned. Give yourself some time to sit on your call. When you pick a robe, you can see one hundred others nearly like it. You may become a walking encyclopedia on that style of gown. All the better if you still have room to choose.
3. If you have acquired “The One,” stop shopping. Any more window-shopping at this 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 blissful feeling of having tried on The One. Go get The One out of the closet, put it on and stand in front of the mirror. You’ll remember precisely why it’s The One.
4. If you’ve bought “The One” and can’t stop shopping, get a 2nd view. Show your first and second choices to other brides. Be truthful — tell them you have already remortgaged your apartment for the 1st dress, but you believe this second dress could be It. They are going to be honest, too — the 1st one was better. You can feel reassured.
5. Don’t tell yourself “I’ll sell the old dress and select a new one.” This old saw of the Two-Dress Bride just won’t work. You will never get more than a fraction of what you paid for your first dress if you purchased it new.
6. Don’t be afraid to target high — no matter what your budget. Some brides knew from the start they would have liked a designer label, but life just didn’t cooperate by making them heiresses. Yet all is not lost if you’re willing to shop courageously. At any given moment, a better-heeled bride is selling her once-used St. Pucchi or Ulla-Maija on eBay. She paid thousands upon thousands, but you, smart patron, will pay half that or less. To take this road, you need to shop sooner than other brides so you’ll have a choice of gowns.
7. Shop on the internet, but never send a check. Bridal robe companies occasionally have a method of vanishing overnite. Whatever what the proprietor tells you, never make a purchase as big a marriage robe without the chargeback protection of a Credit card . If they say they cannot take plastic, move on.
8. Don’t hold out forever for The One. Some brides never find The One. What they do find is a few dresses they look beautiful in. If you’re this bride, try starting your planning from the theme rather than the dress. You’ll probably eventually get sick to death of dress shopping. When that occurs, “good enough” truly will be good enough. Concentrate on other facets of the marriage 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 bridal gown.