The theme for my wedding was decided almost entirely by the type of dress I wanted to wear. My lovely H2B didn't even get the chance to let a fleeting thought fly through his head about what kind of theme he might like. He was automatically over-ruled on any suggestion he might have made...unless that suggestion would have been vintage.
Our theme is vintage. As dictated by my absolute need to have a vintage style dress.
My dress was somewhat determined by our budget. Shoestring. It's not easy, but it can be done.
To start off I googled vintage wedding dresses and saved a whole bunch of inspiration pictures. Anything that I liked I saved, regardless of shape and how I thought it might fit me. Then I went on a lightinthebox Frenzy to get an idea of what prices were too low. (NB I have used Lightinthebox.com previously for small items and some clothes. Whilst clothes were acceptable, they were not of good enough quality that I would purchase my wedding dress from them). I used this time to think about what sort of dress would suit the weather (May, so I could wear a thicker, longer, hotter dress and not die of heat exhaustion).
After all my online research my best friend & I headed out to the bridal shops that were closer by to my house. Although we didn't have appointments I did manage to get to try on a few dresses and we got a rough idea of what style suited me, so we booked appointments at the big bridal stores in Brisbane City for a few weeks later.
I didn't end up buying my dress this day but I did try on enough to know exactly what style of dress suited my shape. One of the places we went to were brilliant, and if they weren't so expensive I might have walked out with my dress that day. I did walk out with the name of a dress designer and model number. The second place I went to taught me a lot about the importance of customer service in selecting your dress. They made us wear gloves so we didn't ruin the dresses as we tried them on. Fair enough. But they were so worried about the dresses that they refused to help me actually dress. When you have an assistant help you try on dresses you really need someone who will try their best to fit you in that dress, no matter what. Considering that most places only stock 1 - 2 sizes of each dress for try ons this is super important in case you do want to order it. I couldn't fit into a single dress that I liked because the assistant was so unwilling to help me.
Just a point to any B2B trying on dresses - wear seamfree underwear to your fittings! They will help the dresses glide right over your derriere - especially helpful if you are blessed in the behind like I am. Also take note of if you can move properly in the dress and how easily you can breathe in it.
I initially tried to find the dress that I thought was 'the one' 2nd hand online, from places like 'I Do Gowns', 'Still White', gumtree, Facebook and the like. I wanted to pay about half, if not less, than what I had been quoted in-store. Unfortunately no-one seemed to have my size for sale.
Whilst I was pondering the fact that my dream dress may never be mine, my mum was noticing some rather large sales going on at a dress shop near where she lived on the Gold Coast. We booked in an appointment for that weekend.
I bought the one. It was a different one to what I thought was initially the one, but it became my new 'One', for several reasons.
I had learnt previously that my style is very much trumpet, which amazed me because looking at all the stick-thin models online wearing trumpet gowns had me convinced that I would look horrible and fat in a figure-hugging gown. I could not have been more wrong.
My assistant helped me pick out about 5 gowns to try on and we set about getting me into and out of each one. She was honest and helpful the entire time. We had a few dresses that I liked, and one dress that looked like I would love but that they only had in an itty bitty size 8. The assistant squeezed me into it somehow (I really, really don't know how, I think she was doing some sort of Harry Potter magic) to get a rough look at it. Then she found a much more modern dress that had the same bodice and trumpet style in my size and asked me to try that on to get a better idea of how I liked the fit.
Customer service skills. Plus 1! She didn't even bat an eyelid when we had to work around my insulin pump site, which I had accidentally put in a really hard to avoid location.
I knew it was the one when all the ladies in the room (who were accompanying a different bride to be) basically demanded I buy it.
At 50% of the ticketed price that was Plus point 2 and I put down my deposit right then.
6 weeks later, I had my perfectly-fit dress in my hands.
