Wedding Dress Part I

I haven't forgot that I have a blog.  But recently, I have been working hard on getting our invitations, my dress and my veil sorted out.

I don't want to post a picture for my wedding dress, so I couldn't really go into details about it.  As a lot of you already knew that I bought my dress online!  I have to say I am very brave.  

First of all, let me give you a bit of idea of the culture background that I came from.  In Taiwan, a bride would usually wear at least 3 different gowns in the wedding day.  One of them is for sure the typical western white wedding dress, and the others are usually just formal evening gowns.  An Engaged couple in Taiwan usually get their pre-wedding photo done a few months before the wedding.  In the pre-wedding photo session, they often wear wedding dress and tux.  For all the above reasons, in Taiwan, bridal attire rental is a big industry.  A typical bridal shop usually provides bridal attires, photographer, and makeup artist.  In short, I came from a culture that no one really buys wedding dress unless they are extra-ordinary people.

In Canada, there is really no such thing as renting a wedding dress.  In fact, in a lot of cases, wedding gowns are usually the most expensive single item in the entire wedding budget.  A wedding gown can range from $1000 to $8000.   The average brand new wedding gown is around $2000 with tax included.  The average bustle, hemming, and other alteration will usually cost at least another $300.  Sometimes the alteration could be very simple, but since it is a "WEDDING" gown, they tend to overcharge.  However I understand the reason behind it, just because it's a wedding gown, the bride might likely to have much higher expectation than usual customers which I believe from a seamstress's prospective, a bridezilla could be very stressful to deal with.  Anyway, my point is, it is expensive to easily spend $2000 on a wedding dress (reasonably or unresaonbly), not to mention it's something most of us hope not to ever use for the second time.

A few friends from Taiwan heard my complaint about the ridiculous wedding dress price in Canada, they suggested getting a wedding dress tailor-made from China.  One wedding photographer friend also mentioned she got a few wedding gowns from Ebay for photo shooting purpose.  I was skeptical to start with, however, with the combination of not being able to find the type of dress I like in store, and the scary price tag in the local bridal shops, I was at the end convinced to make a gamble and buy my dress online. 

Buying a dress online was not easy, it took fair amount of courage and research effort.  There were a lot of "Are you sure that's a good idea?", "how can you not try a dress on?", or "The quality from China is  not reliable".  I knew everyone was just concerned for me, but it was also hard for me to tell people "I am just going to ignore you and do what I think would work for me".  Anyway, as for the research on dresses, I first started with browsing through the pictures online, and found a few pictures I liked.  The ones I picked were all very similar in style, except the waist line varied a little bit.  Using those as a guide line, I went into local bridal shops to try on some similar dresses.  I used that opportunity to figure out which silhouette was both appealing and most flattering for me.  At the end , my conclusion was, if you were an average size person, there was really nothing that would make you look horrible.  I also experienced the moment, other people shopping in the shop complimented how gorgeous I looked in the dress.  And really I am just an average short and chubby girl.  I believe that the happiness of finding love just made me glow from inside of my heart and that's what made every bride beautiful.

Here are a list of local bridal shop (greater Vancouver) I went to and my comments:

Mia's Boutique: not a huge selection but there were seasonably priced dresses
Angeline Bridal: nothing strike my fancy, but again good price, and the owner was very helpful and nice.  The owner, Angeline is a seamstress herself, she charges very reasonablely for alteration even the dress is not bought from her.
Bello Wedding Word:  Huge selection, but only one dress that I sort of liked.  Price were on average $1500 or higher.
Bisou Bridal:  The dresses were quite funky, trendy, and unique.  They carried mostly higher end designer dresses.  Price were $3000 and up.
Bridal Gallery:  The biggest selection out of all the store I have been too.  Price range from $1000 and up.  I know a lot of people got their dresses there but I found the sales person a bit too pushy.
Sposa:  I liked almost all the dresses I tried on in this store, they had an average size selection, but covered a wide diversity of styles.  I found the dress I was looking for there for $2800. (but of course I didn't buy it there)
Lisa's Bridal:  Very out of style selection.  In my opinion, not really worth going, unless you are looking for something cheap.

This a long post, so I am going to stop here.  There will be more posts on my dress hunting story...