How to find your wedding dress : tips & advice.

Whilst we are all bound to our homes, like you I’ve been getting around to all those tasks we often  never have time to do. For example, sorting out my photo library on my phone. I takes pictures of EVERYTHING and I rarely delete stuff. But with over 4000 pictures saved on my phone I thought it was time to have a sieve through them.

Which took me down various trips on memory lane but one in particular stood out – my search for my wedding dress! I have almost all the pictures I took whilst I was trying out wedding dresses on the journey to find that chosen one.

Now, I’ll be honest picking my wedding dress was not the highlight of my wedding planning experience the way I thought it would be. To be honest I found the whole experience quite daunting because like most girls I did have a particular picture of the dress I wanted. But sis when you go into that store… all those visions kind of go out the window. There is just sooo much to choose from. And I very quickly realised that I liked a lot of different styles which made picking even harder.

Another thing to note is, the dress I eventually chose was actually one of the first dresses I tried on and looked NOTHING like the dress I had envisioned wearing. Funny that! But after speaking to past brides and dressmakers this is quite normal. Which was reassuring.

To any past brides out there, did you have a similar experience? Or you stuck to your vision board and went with that?

To the future brides – my teaching point to you. Keep going with the Pinterest boards and thinking of ideas of what you like but remember to have an open mind when you do start shopping around. It will make your experience much more enjoyable!

Above everything that is the main piece of advice I have. Be open minded. There is a lot to be said about wedding dresses and where it lies on your list of priorities for your big day is up to you. Some people are happy for the dress to be more expensive than the photography for example and others want it to be the thing that comes at minimal cost. It’s really up to you.

I’ll give my tips on finding the ‘chosen one’ based on my experience. Four simple things to remember:

• Be realistic about your budget & what makes the most sense.

I knew I wanted a beautiful dress but I was not willing to spend a fortune for it. From experience with other brides in my event planning world I knew that you can get a from anything to £100 or £6000. When we were setting our budget we agreed to £1000 for both the bride’s dress & the groom’s suit. £500 each and that worked perfectly for us.

For you that might be too little or too much. I got my dress from WED2B which is a store I would recommend 100 times over! It’s affordable, you get to pick off the shelf, they are super accommodating in the amount of times you can try dresses on & they let you take pictures!

It ticked all the boxes. In the end in regards to the budget my whole look cost about £650-700 altogether with my dress ‘Georgia’ costing £549.

A note when it comes to the budget: include everything in what you expect to spend, accessories, nails, shoes etc. I made the mistake of not doing that which meant everything over the £500 had to be found from other things.

• Don’t go shopping alone

It would be good to go with someone or people you trust. From the world of weddings, the wedding dress has been made a bonding time and group activity between a bride, mother, bridesmaids and sisters. It’s a nice experience as a group and you can make a day of it, champagne & all! But decide for yourself who is the right person to take along. I went with my mother, maid of honour & my 2 sisters. For me that was the right amount of people and they know me better than anyone. If you decide to make it a group day out with the girls, choose wisely! 10 bridesmaids sharing their opinion on your wedding dress won’t be that much fun I can assure you.

• Practice walking and sitting down in your dress

I’m serious. There was this one dress that I absolutely loved! But I literally couldn’t do a single thing in it. I’m a lover of the dancefloor and best believe I wanted to be dancing all night on my wedding dress. So even though I would have looked stunning I would have been a statue! So, that was out of the running!

• Pick the dress that makes you the happiest.

I don’t really buy into the whole “there’s a feeling and crying when you find the right dress” stuff but I do know that when I put on Georgia, even the first time I felt quite giddy & free. And that’s how I wanted to feel on my wedding day. It was a beautiful dress, different from what I initially wanted but I felt beautiful and happy in it. She was the winner.

in a nutshell that is my overall wedding dress shopping experience. There’s always a lot more to be said when it comes to wedding related things but it’s such a subjective topic. If you would be interested in reading more about the wedding budget overall, how we did ours and any tips please do let me know 😊

Given our current climate I can understand that wedding dress shopping if you are wedding planning is the least of your concerns and something very difficult to do right not but I do hope you find this useful. And I know the year isn’t going how you had planned it, but I pray you get to have that big day you dreamt about. Sending you all nothing but love & light.

Love TSO