Earlier this week I posted on the Untraditional Fashionista Facebook page a link to wedding dresses for sale on Groupon and asked the question if you would buy your wedding dress online and promised to share my experience this week on the blog.
A couple years before I got married, I was taking fashion design classes in school which had me looking through magazines and online for inspiration all the time. During that time I found a dress that I completely fell in love with and knew I would want for my wedding dress one day. At this point in time though, the dress was already from a previous season so it couldn't be bought anywhere then anyway. It was an Enzoani gown and it was gorgeous. I loved everything about it. I am not the type of girl that had her wedding planned out for as long as she could remember. I was the worst bride at wedding planning so it was out of character a little bit to be so in love with something relating to my wedding before I was even engaged. But this dress just did it for me. See the pictures of it below:
I thought this dress was breathtaking. It was elegant. It was simple. It was unique. I loved the simplicity. I loved the long lines. I loved the finely pleated chiffon. It was stunning and it was going to be my dress one day.
So when the time came that I was actually engaged (a year or two later), I went and tried on some dresses at David's Bridal but I didn't love anything like I loved this dress. There were pretty things there for sure and a few that I could have been happy with but I felt like I needed something stunning. I wanted something different and I felt like I needed to have an extra special dress since I had been studying fashion for so long.
I started searching the internet like crazy trying to find anywhere that would sell the dress. I found a couple of people that were selling their used dresses but one was a much larger size and I didn't feel like it could be taken in as much as it would need to be and still look good, and the other didn't seem clean and I didn't want to risk spending all that money and being stuck with a stained dress.
I then considered making my dress but pretty quickly decided against it. I couldn't find the right fabric anywhere and didn't want to buy regular chiffon and pay to have it steam pleated as the pleats wouldn't be permanent and I don't know of anywhere I could get it chemical pleated. Plus I was working two jobs at the time, and planning a wedding. I didn't want the extra stress of making my dress and I wasn't confident in my abilities to make those flowers look good. So back to the internet I went.
I found a place in China that advertised that they would make the dress for some amazing deal like $399 or something, it would be pure silk, it would be custom made, and I would have it within 4 weeks. This was too good to be true. I was of course wary of this and the website had mixed reviews but at that price, how could I not do it? Plus with that quick turn around time, if I didn't like it, I would still have time to find something else. After all, my wedding was about 6 months out at this point.
After 2 months I was starting to stress. I emailed the company multiple times to get an update on my dress and was assured it would be on it's way soon. It finally arrived in June (my wedding was scheduled for August). I was so excited when the package showed up. This is what my custom made dream gown looked like:
I am not pulling a very happy bride-to-be face. My dress was not the wonderful piece of art I had envisioned. The dress was similar, yes, but it was definitely not THE dress. I referred to it as a dress inspired by the Enzoani gown, not a replica. The quality was not there, the pleating didn't look good, and what bothered me the most was they put a waist seam in the middle. What I loved most about the Enzoani gown was that it had long smooth lines and there was no seaming in the body. You can't add a seam in the middle with pleated/crinkled chiffon. It doesn't lay flat and doesn't look pretty. I was devastated! I am pretty sure I had a good cry about it and I called my wedding planner panicked about what I was going to do.
Back to the bridal shops I went again to try on more dresses. I'm not a big shopper so this was a bit of an ordeal. Trying on wedding gowns at first is fun but it can get old fast. And many of you may not know this but 2 months is not enough time to get a wedding dress.
Generally wedding shops have a sample dress that you try on and pick out. Once you do that, they will order the dress for you and the turn around time is generally 6-8 weeks. After that, you almost without exception will need to have your dress altered. Depending on the extent of the alterations, you're looking at 2-4 weeks for that. That put any potential dress I would buy in September/early October. That would not do. That limited me even more and meant I had to buy a dress off the rack (i.e. a sample dress).
I probably tried on another dozen dresses, maybe even 2 dozen. I don't remember how many but it was a lot! And I think I went to every bridal shop in town.
Finally I went to Avenia Bridal/Nancy Barrus Couture in Provo (roughly a 45-60 minute drive away). I had interned for Nancy Barrus a couple years prior and I should have had her make me the dress from the beginning but knew her price tag would be much larger than the place in China I had ordered from and I was hoping to get a deal. I didn't have time for Nancy to make me a dress at this point but lucky for me, she was having a sample sale and I found a lovely Tara Keely dress. The price tag was considerable more than the $399 but my dress was beautiful and I felt beautiful in it. It was perfect for my wedding.
My dad even said it was the most beautiful dress he had ever seen and that it was worth every penny. It turned out great in the end but wedding dress shopping was not one of the highlights of my life and if I ever have to do it again, I will absolutely not be ordering a dress online.
