According to the Frugal Bridebuying a wedding gown can be very expensive if you do not do a little searching around first. In fact the website recommends that you start shopping around for the right gown between four and eight months before the wedding.
It also helps if you some idea of the style of gown that you want. Should it be a princess cut, a sheath or a prom style gown? Short sleeves or long sleeves. What is your ideal length? Think about the neckline.
Another tip is to never tell the gown vendor how much you love the gown. Instead be a bit stand offish and say “tis is the one I like the best.” This prevents the price from being raised to the hilt on the spot.
Another tip is to try and buy your gown online. This repulses many brides who picture themselves in the bridal salon admiring themselves in the mirror but it can save you hundreds of dollars.
Photo by mistercullen
The Paris wedding fashion shows just wrapped up and the surprise of the season is black wedding dresses for Spring 2008. Black wedding dresses were featured in the collections of Max Chaoul and Creations Bochet. One couture designer - Cymbeline actually featured four of these dresses on the Paris runway.
The most spectacular, according to a blogger at Alibaba who was at the Paris shows were the four dresses by Cymbelene. One dress looks like just a traditional A line dress with a prom style bodice and long veil only everything is in black. This gives the bride a strangley Spanish feel. Another one of the Cymbeline dresses is more forties and features a heart shape décolleté with ruching across the bodice. This look is complimented by blacking netting over the bride’s face. Another is a youthful halter style that you would normally expect to be done in a color like pink, but done in black.
Perhaps the most dramatic of the black wedding dresses is Cymbeline’s black and white couture wedding dress which layers twenty frills of white silk with black netting so it looks like the details are cascading down the side of the A line skirt. The effect is very Tuxedo in flair and definitely not the dress to wear if you are a shrinking violet.
In this age of ostentatious and glamorous gowns it was somehow refreshing to run across a mention of Bianca Jagger’s famous wedding ensemble on Bridezilla.com. Bianca Jagger made wedding fashion history back in the seventies when she married rock god Mick Jagger in a white Yves St. Laurent suit complete with narrow lapels, short waist and long tapered trousers. She topped this with a big white floppy hat and wore white patent heals. The hat itself was gargantuan and almost looked like a lampshade sitting on the beauty’s famous head. She also wore her famous black hair down to her shoulders which was also very unusual for the time. The fitted silk white suit contrasted beautifully with her cocoa colored skin and chocolate hair. Her only jewelry was a sophisticate little cluster of orchids.
The look was brazen, spunky and refreshing. If you plan to marry a rock god any time soon or even rock god wanna-be this might be the outfit for you. You can see it for yourself at Elle UK. The photo to the right is an example of a white wedding suit from Isaac Mizrahi.
Thinking of making your own wedding dress? It might not be such a bad idea. You could completely enjoy adding your own handmade touches to the dress. There is just something so special about a dress that is perfectly and professionally turned out, complete with unusual touches such as rhinestones, webbing or ruching.
A good book on this subject is Bridal Couture – Fine Sewing Techniques for Bridal and Evening Wear. Basically this is a how to manual on wedding gown construction and also advanced dressmaking skills. This book covers a lot of ground including information about lace, bodices, bustles and trains. Even if you are not sewing your own wedding gown this book is highly recommended. This is because you can use it to help whoever is custom sewing your gown achieve exactly the details you want. Bridal Couture is just one of many books available, but it is one of the most colorful and user friendly books on the topic on the shelves out there.
If you are looking for a unique wedding dress that is not too flashy yet femine and elegant at the same time you might be interested in the designs of Alvina Valenta. This is a couture style designer whose designs have that metropolitan flair. The dresses are very cotnemporary but they also give a slight nod to traditional designs from other eras, especially 1940s movie star glam. The reason the dresses work so well is that they are not so over the top in their design references to Hollywood glam that they make the bride look like she is wearing a costume as she walks down the aisle. There are a couple of wild styles in this collection including a halter style dress that is tied at the neck in a huge bow. The ecru, cream, light blues and eggshell colors in this collection also look great with the skin tones and hair colors of black and Latina women.
The dresses below are from the 2008 collection.
Alvina Valenta
525 7th Ave., Suite 1703
New York, NY 10018
According to Babylon Wedding Productions the only way to find out which wedding veil is going to go best with your dress is try them on. There are several different types of wedding veils available. The type is usually determined by length. For instance the elbow length veil does reach the elbows. It usually looks best with shorter dresses with no bustles or trains. Fingertip length veils fall to the end of the bride’s fingertips. It goes best with a wedding dress l that is longer than tea length although you also see them with floor length dresses as well. A blusher veil is a thin veil that only covers the face. It looks great with a wedding suit or a shorter dress although nowadays it is also seen worn with long goddess style gowns. The classic chapel veil is three yards long. Long sleeved, full gowns that fall to the floor look best with this dramatic type of veil. These are not hard fast rules for wedding veil wear but they tend to be the tried and true rules for looking your best.
Photo from Wedding-Veil.com
If you want to be a bit of a hippie when you get married then your choice of wedding dress fabric has definitely got to be cotton or linen. This is also a great choice of fabric and style to wear for your wedding if you are on a budget. All a hippie wedding dress is a gauzy piece of fabric that is finished with ribbons and preferably real flowers. All you need is a garland of flowers for your hair and if you are a true hippie you don’t even need shoes (especially if you are getting married barefoot on the beach.) However, if you do want to wear shoes to go with your filmy cotton wedding dress there are many stores online that also sell white sandals and thongs that are decorated with flowers and sequins.
If you are looking for hippie-wedding dresses you might want to consider looking at the well stitched together dresses at HippieClothes.com. There are several beautifully stitched patchwork style gauze dresses that have a flowing hemline. Several include embroidered strings of flowers across the bodice which would go well with at any hippie style wedding. Just make sure your garland matches the color of the embroidery.
HippieClothes.com
877-565-7356
According to a report on BBC television the days when you can just try on wedding gowns to your heart’s content might be gone. It seems that some wedding gown places in the U.K. will now charge you a fee for each wedding gown that you try on or try to charge you a flat fee for the privilege of trying on a gown. So why would stores want to do this to you? It is not to turn you off the already daunting task of trying on wedding gowns. Rather it is an effort to discourage Bridezillas from going wild in the store. Basically like any other item a wedding dress is subject to a great deal of wear and tear in general if it is handled. Just think!If twenty people start trying on the same delicate lace and taffeta dress it might start to look crumpled. Before you know it the dress is stretched, scuffed or even stained and the owner of the bridal shop has to offer a discount. At least this seems to be one way that bridal shop owners can keep their bridal gowns in better condition. Who wants to pay thousands of dollars for a dress that has been manhandled to death anyways?
If you want a really glamorous gold wedding gown then you must check into Hollywood Dream Gowns. These are incredibly glamorous and detailed works of art that are also surprisingly affordable. The gold colored gowns on this site are found under a collection known as Rochelle. These gowns have very tight smooth satin bodices that fit like a glove that can be embellished with sequins or beads. The satin itself is beautiful and comes in different shades of platinum to more of a yellow gold. If you ever want to look like a sleek and gleaming Oscar statue at your wedding then this is the wedding gown site for you. These also look fantastic with a long pair of gold gloves that reach far above the elbow and a matching pair of gold and Lucite high heels. The gold color that is the most “in” is the paler platinum color.
Hollywood Dreams
Unit 3B
12-48 Northumberland Park
London N17 OTX
0208 801 9797
Spanish contemporary style wedding dresses have been in style for the last decade or so. One of the trend-setting shops that sells them is Modelnovias. This is a huge Spanish wedding dress company that was started in 1994 and has outlets on three continents. These are well crafted dresses and they are very sleek, young and modern looking.
If you want tight fitting dresses with fish tales, and head to toe ruffles this is where you will find them. You could say the company’s specialty is tight fitting ruching that gives these dresses a very sexy feel. Many have layers of chiffon but fitted very tightly against the body so they resemble evening gowns. Any of them would look absolutely perfect on Penelope Cruz or Salma Hayek.
These are beautiful dresses that mix the best details of both New and Old Worlds. The company also makes what they call “night dresses” but which are exactly very vibrantly colored evening gowns that would look great on any bridesmaid.
Modelnovias
Spain
Phone: 0034 986 482957
