When tiny girls spend their math classes daydreaming of weddings (instead of winning the World Series — not to assert you can’t do both ), what do they dream of first? The perfect marriage dress, of course: a gown in white satin with a bustle and sweeping train, the ideal elaborations, and the ideal shoes.
Many brides are lucky. They may search low and high, facing chilly dept stores and forceful bridal shops, but eventually they come face-to-face with The One. They know this is The One as they start crying, or their mum or chums all start crying instantly. All of the planning …. the tone, the right sort 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 three or 4 states, but they haven’t found The One. Instead, they’ve found three or 4 Contenders, all of which are serviceable and nice, but not earth-shattering sufficient to tell them that now is certainly time to stop the searching and get on with the planning. These brides have it harder.
Even if you’re the first kind of bride, purchasing the dress is sort of a momentous decision that you run a likelihood of falling into that wallet-skinning class known as the Two-Dress Bride. Here are some tips for picking the perfect dress and avoiding that nasty fate.
1. Bring the entourage, but don’t buy. It is 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 part of such a critical call. But no matter 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 have purchased it, you have bought it.
2. Don’t buy too early unless you should. Bridal robes can take 4 to ten months to come from the manufacturer, but there is no reason to buy over a year ahead of time, unless your chosen style is going to be discontinued. Give yourself some time to sit on your call. When you pick a robe, you will see one hundred others almost like it. You’ll become a walking encyclopedia on that style of robe. All the better if you 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 before the mirror. You can remember precisely why it is the One.
4. If you’ve bought “The One” and can’t stop shopping, get a 2nd standpoint. Show your first and second choices to other brides. Be truthful — tell them you have already remortgaged your apartment for the first dress, but you believe this second dress might be It. They’ll be truthful, too — the 1st one was better. You’ll 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 scared to target high — no matter what your financial position. Some brides knew from the start they would have liked a designer label, but life just failed to cooperate by making them heiresses. Yet all isn’t 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 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 will have a choice of gowns.
7. Shop on the web, but never send a check. Bridal robe companies infrequently have a method of disappearing overnight. Regardless of what the proprietor tells you, never make a purchase as big a marriage robe without the chargeback protection of a Credit card . If they assert 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 pretty in. If you’re this bride, try starting your planning from the theme instead of the dress. You will potentially finally get sick to death of dress shopping. When that occurs, “good enough” really will be good enough. Concentrate on other aspects of the marriage that mean a lot to you, like the venue, the food, or the inescapable devotion of your soon-to-be husband.
If you enjoy reading this article and you would like to have a better understanding of the many different kinds of wedding gowns, visit yourweddinggowns.com and also check out wedding gowns.