bridal dress bonanza
If you are going to order a dress online, you first need to figure out what kind of dress fits your shape. The only way you can do this is to try on tons of dresses. My best friend came with me for bridal gown bonanza weekend. She booked us appointments for two days solid. We went to high end stores and down to off the rack sample stores (another good place to get a dress). The first place we went was having a trunk sale. This is where the store shows every dress in a designer’s collection and you can try on as many as you can fit into your appointment, which is usually around 4-5 dresses. The upside is that you get to see a lot of dresses hanging freely as opposed to smashed on racks with other dresses. The downside is that you generally ONLY get to see those dresses. We couldn’t really see other designers because it was a trunk show. So I tried on a few dresses and the high quality of the material was very evident. At over $3,000, it should be! This was my first round of the obligatory wedding related questions followed up by either wedding stories or tales of the sales ladies own dating life.
How did you meet your fiance? Where is your wedding? and the seemingly innocent:
“When is your wedding?”
This is a tricky question, because you might not want to give the real date. If the wedding date is within 6 months of when you are shopping, they sales lady will put on the very concerned face and tell you that you really need to order soon because it takes that long to get a dress. Then you start to get the harder sell. YUCK!
“What is your budget?” Ew. Another trick question. Obviously you need to HAVE a budget, but you do not need to disclose it. If anything give a range. You will quickly notice that the sales lady will find the top of that range and a little over the top of the range. This is how they make you buy more dress than you want. So my advice, is to give a range lower than what you really have budgeted. That way when the sales lady finds the “perfect dress” but apologetically she tells you it is a little out of your price range…Surprise! It still IS in your price range.
Next stop was a sample store. This is where all of the dress samples that lived in other bridal shops for a while went to be sold. This is also a good place to get dresses at discount prices. Same round of obligatory questions asked by the sales ladies, but at least the saleslady had a whisper of genuineness about her. Which leads me to the next shop….