What to expect when you visit wedding dress shopS
You’ll get the most out of your visit to a wedding dress shop if you take the time to prepare properly
Choosing a wedding dress might seem like a daunting job. How do you find the perfect one amidst the thousands you can choose from? You might be tempted to line up a rake of visits to wedding dress shops, in the hope of working your way through the entire collection of each one. But that’s not the best use of your time. And the process will become more like a chore than an exciting bridal experience. In this post, we’ll run you through how to find the best bridal shop for you, what to expect from your visit and how to get the most out of it so you end up with a wedding dress you adore.
When to start looking for your wedding dress
Before we go any further, there are two really important points we’d like to make:
It’s never too late to start looking for your wedding dress.
But you can start looking too early.
We know from many, many years of helping brides find their perfect dress that starting too early is counterproductive. You won’t gain anything by beginning your search more than a year ahead of your wedding day. Twelve months is plenty of time for you to find the wedding dress of your dreams.
If you start too early, you run the risk of buying a dress and then worrying that you might miss out on an even better one in the new collections coming out. Also, it’s a human trait to avoid making a decision when you have too much time in which to make it. You could fall into the trap of ‘one more shop’ or ‘just one more look online’, driven by a fear of missing out.
Trust us when we say that your perfect wedding dress is waiting for you, and 12 months is plenty of time to find it. You don’t need to start your search years in advance.
Another key point is that you need to be in the right headspace when you start looking for your wedding dress. You need to be in the mindset that if you see a dress that truly speaks to you deep down, you are willing to buy it, rather than seeing a visit to a wedding dress shop as a loosey-goosey fact-finding mission or an opportunity to be styled. Styling is part of the service, but it isn’t the main reason for a day out trying on dresses in different shops.
The other misconception is that you can leave it too late to start your search. Or that if you don’t snap up a dress at least six months before your wedding day, you’ll have to make do with something off the peg. Both of these are wrong.
Would you be shocked if we told you that we’ve helped many brides find their perfect wedding dress just a few weeks before their wedding day? And that we were able to arrange for alterations to be made in time? (More about alterations below.) We even helped one bride with a week to go. Now, we’re not saying that was ideal. But we are saying that if you contact us one or two months before your wedding, you’ll find we are absolutely able to help you.
So if anyone tells you that you should have bought your dress a year ago, smile politely and know that you still have plenty of time.
Who should you bring to wedding dress shops?
Honestly? You don’t really need to bring anyone. It’s perfectly acceptable to come on your own. We’re often asked whether that’s OK, and the answer is of course it is. You’re the one who’ll be wearing the dress, after all. And we want to spend as much time focussed on you as possible. The more people you bring, the more our time is split, and the less attention we can dedicate solely to you.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring someone along if you want to. You can, of course, especially if you trust their opinion. However, our advice is to limit the number of people you bring with you to one or two, no more. And prepare them carefully.
It’s important they understand that a visit to a wedding dress shop isn’t a girls’ day out. Some wedding dress shops serve Prosecco and lay on finger food. They are selling an experience rather than a service. Say I Do, on the other hand, is built on the principle of service. Our goal is to make sure every bride who comes through our doors finds a wedding dress she absolutely loves.
And we’d like to stress the word ‘bride’, because when you bring people with you, they will project the dresses onto themselves, rather than you. In other words, they’ll be thinking how it would look on them, rather than how it looks on you. That’s not meant to sound mean, it’s just human nature. So when you do choose who to bring along, make sure it’s someone who understands you are in the driving seat and that the visit is a serious look at potential gowns.
Also, don’t forget that we’re professionals whose job it is to think about you and guide you towards a wedding dress that suits your taste — and no one else’s. So if you do come alone, we’ll give you all the direction and guidance you need.
Something else brides often don’t realise is that they don’t need to bring their full team of bridesmaids with them. You might be stressed that you’ll offend someone if you don’t ask them to come along, but don’t worry about it. In our experience, not all of the bridesmaids want to come anyway. And they will also understand if you limit yourself to your chief bridesmaid and a friend who really has an eye for fashion.
Think of it this way: your visit to a bridal boutique is a business trip. Of course, it can be fun. In fact, it should be. We do our best to ensure that it is. But ultimately, you are there to do one of the most important jobs on your wedding to-do list: find a gorgeous dress. And that’s quite serious business, isn’t it?
Mum’s the word
There is one person we haven’t mentioned yet.
Mum.
Over the years, we’ve seen mothers who came along to genuinely support their daughter and whose only desire was for their daughter’s wishes to be fulfilled.
But we’ve also seen the opposite. Mums who want to stamp their taste and preferences on the wedding dress. Instead of helping their daughter find what she wants, they end up trying to take over the boutique visit to find a dress that they think their daughter should have. In other words, they’re actually shopping for themselves, not their daughter.
Our advice is that you should only bring Mum along if you know for sure she’ll be supportive rather than nudge you towards her own preferences.
Plan ahead: style and budget
The best way to get the most out of your visit to a bridal shop to look at wedding dresses is to plan ahead properly.
Firstly, make sure the shop you want to visit sells the style of dress you like. This is very easy to do: simply go to their website and check out the collection they offer. If you don’t see a style of dress that appeals to you on the website, then it’s not the boutique for you.
Trust us, bridal shops don’t have a secret collection out the back that they only show to select brides. All bridal boutiques want to sell wedding dresses. And you can’t sell a dress that you are keeping hidden away. So they will display all the dresses they can offer you online and on the shop racks.
If you don’t see dresses you love on the website, don’t waste your precious time booking an appointment in the hope of seeing something different, because the boutique won’t have anything else to show you.
Secondly, be honest with yourself about your budget — and let the boutique know what it is when you visit. That way, you’ll see dresses that match your price range. And bear in mind that most boutiques can offer you fabulous bridal fashion at a very reasonable cost. We have some stunning dresses that won’t break the bank. Or if you do want to go all out, we’ve got that kind of dress too.
It doesn’t matter how high or how modest your budget is, what matters to us is that you know what you plan to spend. Our job is to guide you towards a dress that’s a perfect fit for both your body and your bank balance.
Talking of a perfect fit for your body…
Wedding dress sizes are precise, alterations are even more precise
When you shop for clothes on the high street, you’re shopping in a world of ‘roughly good enough’ when it comes to clothing sizes, especially when you shop at the big chains or buy off the peg. That’s because the clothes sold on the high street have to fit a wide variety of body shapes and types. As a result, there is some variation in the sizing.
In fact, the sizing can be so slack that you might think you’re buying a size 8 or 10 because that’s what it says on the label, when in reality you’re getting something that’s closer to a size 12 or 14.
Wedding dresses, on the other hand, are sized very precisely. They have to be because they are purposely designed to fit your body in a particular way. They are structural in nature. A wedding dress doesn’t hang off you like a loose garment that was made to fit lots of people. It drapes around you beautifully like it was made to fit one person and one person only: you.
That’s because once you’ve chosen the dress you adore, it will need altering to fit you perfectly. And alterations are bespoke and unique to every bride. After all, unless you have an identical twin, no two people have exactly the same figure.
Even if you choose a dress and it fits absolutely perfectly in the shop three months before your wedding, there’s a chance your shape will have changed slightly by the time your wedding day rolls around. Sometimes that’s intentional. For instance, it’s not uncommon for brides to get into the shape of their lives for their wedding. And sometimes it’s just the small changes that occur to your body regardless that mean the dress needs some small tweaking in the run-up to the big day.
Not all designs suit everyone
Because we all have different body shapes, not all wedding dress designs will suit all brides. Dresses are designed with particular body shapes in mind.
A classic example are backless dresses. They don’t really suit a big bust. Remember when we said that wedding dresses are structural? This is a good example because of the lack of structure at the back of the dress to hold it in place. Backless dresses suit a more slender body type.
So be prepared when you visit a wedding shop. You might find that the dress you saw on the website, which looked stunning on a professional model, may not be right for you. But also, be prepared to find a dress that is completely right for you, even if it’s one you hadn’t really considered before.
This is where the expertise of a bridal boutique really shines. We know which dress designs suit which body types, and which dresses will make you look utterly amazing on your wedding day. It’s hard to describe the joy we get from seeing a bride with a beaming smile as she looks at herself in our mirrors, wearing a dress that makes her look simply gorgeous and which she has totally fallen in love with.
Don’t buy a wedding dress if…
Your ideal wedding dress is out there waiting for you. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve helped thousands of brides find theirs, and we’ll help you find yours too.
But how do you know when you’ve found ‘The One’?
Well, it’s a bit like when you found the one you are going to marry. You know deep down whether they are the right person. Call it instinct or intuition. Maybe you can’t put your finger on it, or you can’t put it into words, but you know. You just know.
Your wedding dress will have the same effect on you.
So don’t buy a wedding dress if you don’t have that deep-down, 100% connection with it. If you don’t have that bond, it’s not the wedding dress for you. ‘Ah, it’ll be grand’ isn’t good enough. It’s better to come back for a second look, rather than buy a dress you aren’t besotted with.
The reverse is also true. If you have that instinctive reaction to a dress and you absolutely, completely, totally know it’s the right dress, buy it.
If you’ve done your groundwork properly, know what style you love and have seen that the boutique sells that style of dress, it’s completely normal to find your perfect wedding dress on your first visit. It doesn’t always happen, of course. But it’s not unusual, either. It’s unlikely you’ll gain anything by continuing on an endless carousel of visits to boutiques to see whether you can find an even more perfect one. The thing about perfect is that it’s… well… perfect already.
Our job isn’t to sell you a wedding dress
We take the trust you place in us very seriously. And while it sounds wrong, our job isn’t to sell you a wedding dress. No. Our job is to help you feel and look stunning on your wedding day by bringing you and your ideal dress together.
Really, we’re matchmakers. We don’t just sell you a dress. Anyone can sell you a dress. Instead, we match you with your perfect bridal fashion.
When we ask you, ‘do you absolutely love this wedding dress?’ We want you to say, ‘I do’.