Choosing Your Wedding Gown: Bridal Shops

Choosing the right shop is a crucial step toward purchasing your wedding gown. The reputation of the store owners and the duration of the time they have been in business usually prove to be of great significance. For that, at first asking around and visiting several shops without making an impulsive decision is a must.

A positive sign for any store is when the shop owner or a sales person is willing to tell you the types of policies they have concerning disasters like fires, weather mishaps, or bankruptcy that could shut down the store and force them not to deliver the dress on time. Many a wedding has been made less than 100 % perfect because of a bridal shop's failure to deliver.

The location of the store matters. A bride, with everything she has to do, does not want to travel long distances for the fittings, and remember that a bridal gown may require several fittings, no matter how perfect the torso of the bride may be.

The average price of the bridal gowns sold in a shop should be the first question to ask, since that will give an idea up front if that store is for you. Then, the next question should be if the alterations or wedding dress preservation are included in the price. Some establishments offer reasonably priced package deals that include fittings, alterations, dry cleaning, and preservation.

Bridal shops come in many sizes. Besides a selection of ready-made or made-to-order bridal gowns, most of them offer other services as well.

The expanse of the inventory and the quality of the merchandise carry a weight in giving the bride several options in sizes and styles. Whether the shop has veils or not is of essence. There are some high-end bridal shops that only sell the gown but not the veil. A bride needs to have her veil match her dress.

The condition of the shop is another consideration. An efficient bridal shop has to be clean and well-organized; it needs to have good lighting, several professionally angled mirrors, and lots space to move around for the bride to see herself in a gown from all sides while standing still and while in motion.

It is also imperative that the sales staff are informed enough to know the answers to the bride's questions. A pushy, rude, and patronizing sales person can turn the pleasant experience of choosing one's bridal gown into a nightmare.

Sales people should respect the bride and her time. When you are on time for your appointment and they make you wait for more than ten minutes, then it is a good idea to search for another place.

When the sales people steer the bride toward a style that flatters her figure the most, that store will be recommended by many people to others. When my niece opted for a slim-line gown and her mother insisted on a full skirt, the sales people came to their rescue with a designer slim-line gown and a full-skirt train that looked like a full skirt with a flowing rich train from the back, while its straight lines up front favored the bride's youthful shape. Since the train was removable for freer movement and dancing during the reception, the gown turned out to be practical as well as being elegant.

Searching for the perfect wedding gown is fun and it should be an enjoyable experience. A wedding dress is the most important dress you'll ever wear in your life, because in it, you'll take an oath to spend the rest of your life with the person who will be your mate.

How To Choose A Wedding Dress For Brides

The most common dilemma facing brides when looking for their wedding dress, is deciding what style of dress they want and where to get it from?. Unless they have done their homework, it can take considerable time to figure this out.

Brides don't particularly want to waste time going to the wrong stores and the bridal boutiques certainly do not want to waste time on brides, who are not really in their market. So the following advice should help brides decide on which stores to make appointments to visit.

Q. How much should I expect to pay for my dress?

Wedding dresses vary considerably in price from £500 to £50,000. (and also in terms of what you get for your money). For example, you can purchase a perfectly adequate off the peg dress, from bridal chains such as Pronuptia or Berkertex brides, for as little as £300. But you have to accept, that at this price, the dress is likely to be mass produced (ie: manufactured in the Far East), and is unlikely to be in silk fabrics or particularly unique.

On the other hand you can also buy famous New York designer dresses for £3000 or more (which are also manufactured in China and then altered to fit you) from top West end designer bridal stores such as Selfridges and Browns Bride. Admittedly the service is better and you should expect silk fabrics, but one could argue that if you are paying £3000 for an off the peg dress, then you are simply paying for the name.

If the bride is prepared to pay £3000 for her dress, it should (at the very least), be made to measure. For example, all Johanna Hehir's dresses can be made to measure for between £1800 and £4000 . This means the wedding dress is individually, hand made in England, to fit you.

At this point it is probably helpful to understand the difference between off the peg, made to measure and couture dresses.

The majority of UK bridal stores buy in the dresses they sell, from big bridal dress manufacturers (most of whom manufacture out of the Far East). These dresses are usually ordered for the customer in the closest standard size and then altered to fit the bride. This is not ideal fit wise, but it is the only way to keep prices low. This is commonly known as "off the peg" but unfortunately some bridal stores attempt to pass this off as "made to measure". Don't forget to ask if the price quoted includes alterations? As these are usually extra and can add several hundred pounds to the price of the dress, depending on what needs doing.

There are also a number of designers who mistakenly describe their dresses as "couture" when in fact they are made to measure. These are all rather cynical attempts to take advantage of the bride's lack of understanding and to persuade her that she is getting more for her money than she actually is.

Made to measure is where the bride chooses an existing design, that is then made up to fit her. The price quoted normally includes a number of fittings. Made to measure dresses typically start from £1500 upwards. In the ideal world, all brides would have their dresses made to measure, to ensure a perfect fit.

Couture is where the customer sits down with the designer and the dress is designed from scratch to the customer's specification. With couture, there is usually always a toile fitting, (to check the fit of the pattern), before the dress is cut and made up. Couture dresses typically start from £3000 upwards, as they are very time consuming and expensive to manufacture.