Thoughts On Wedding Dress Shopping

19 Apr 2018


Not-so-interesting fact about Kate: my idea of a successful shopping trip is coming home with a bag full of books and a box of cookies.

My approach to clothes shopping is either do-it-online or go into a clothes shop when I’ve got limited time. And always shop alone. I do not understand the point of window shopping, I prefer not to have limitless options and I get unnecessarily irritated if it takes forever to find what I’ve got in mind.

So, surprise, surprise; I don’t think I’m well suited to shopping for a wedding dress.

Reader, I’m already bored of looking and I’m not even close to finding what I want (not helped by the fact that I don’t really know what I want), and there’s still over a year to go *lies down dramatically*.

Stereotypically, I’m supposed to find this fun I know, but my sarcastic inner monologue is somewhat hampering the experience. So far ‘shopping’ has mostly involved browsing the websites of bridal stores and you know what? It mostly just makes me what to have an enormous rant.

Mainly about the cost tbh. Apparently there are a lot of people out there re-mortgaging their houses to buy a wedding dress; who knew? Of course a lot of the time, you don’t even know the cost (or it says 'starts from £7868897'... starts??). Which goes against my number one rule of clothes shopping: check the price first because if I can’t afford it, what’s the point of trying it on?

I saw one store that only provided dresses in a size 10. One that had a lengthy paragraph about why you MUST NOT TAKE ANY PHOTOS whilst trying on a dress. All of them are appointment-only (what’s wrong with a casual browse…) and I swear if I see one more photo of some blonde woman with a tiny waist prancing around in a field in a white dress….

I’m sure there are plenty out there who will point out that this is all pretty standard in the world of bridal shops but if anything, that just irritates me more.

I have so little desire to engage with it all.

I hate to be the person who sounds like a killjoy because I am very excited for my wedding day and it is really special to me. BUT… it is just one day. And, if all goes to plan, I will spend the majority of that one day sat in a pub garden sipping on Malibu & cokes and nattering to all my favourite people.

Do I need to be wearing a dress that costs £3000 to enjoy that? Do I heck. In fact, the stress of wearing something so expensive will probably make me enjoy the day less because what if I spill my coke on myself whilst dancing?! (A highly likely possibility, I assure you.) Can I even justify that amount of money on an outfit that I literally will wear once? Well... no.

As an aside – this is not me judging anyone who does want to spend that amount of money on their wedding dress. Girl, it’s your wedding and your money: YOU DO YOU.

Me though? I’ll probably be focusing my search on high street brands going forward. Honestly, part of me really just wants to pull on a cute lil dress from ASOS, a pair of white converse and skip around that pub garden with not a care in the world.

Maybe I will do that, maybe I’ll be a bit more fancy. Who knows right now.

What I do know is that, when I do finally buy a dress, it won’t cost a fortune, it won’t be from a bridal store, it may not even be white… but, hey, it’ll be me.

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