Some of my friends reported that they and their bridesmaids all agreed on what they wanted, went out, and bought the dresses within a week. Other friends just bought the dresses they wanted in their bridesmaids’ respective sizes. Still other friends talked about searching for months for dresses that everyone liked.
How long the process takes really hinges on three things:
- How much of a choice are you willing to give your bridesmaids about what they wear?
- Do you want them to match or are different styles in the same color okay with you?
- How many bridesmaids do you have?
In the case of my bridal party, I knew that I wanted Hunter Green (that rich, Christmas-y green) as the color for the gowns. However, I was also aware that certain shades of green bring out the olive undertones in my family’s skin and make us look half-dead. So, I decided that if hunter didn’t work, I would be just as happy with a nice, deep Royal Blue. Luckily for me, all the bridesmaids liked the Hunter Green and it worked with their individual skin tones.
After that, it was a matter of deciding on the style of the dress. I went through bridal magazines and web sites to get an idea of what I wanted, but I didn’t feel entirely comfortable telling other people what to wear, so I left the final decision up to the girls.
You would think that, being from the same gene pool and all, we would all have similar body types and skin tones. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
My Maid of Honor is petite and very curvy with fair skin (much like my sister’s and mine), my other cousin is very tall and willowy with tan skin, and my little sister has the body of a 14-year-old. With this in mind, I offered the option of different styles in the same color, but my cousins and sister almost instantly vetoed that – they all agreed that they wanted to match.
At Mom’s suggestion, we tried on gowns that were already in my closet first. My cousins and sister each took a turn in my old prom dresses and my bridesmaid dress from a dear friend’s wedding. From that we figured out what kinds of styles were most comfortable for all of them. From there, we looked at the dresses I had picked out on the Internet, discarded some and slowly narrowed down the field.
Soon we had a general idea of what we all wanted. Time to go shopping!
We looked in bridal salons, of course, but we also went to all of our local department stores. Most of them have a steady supply of formal dresses, and prom was soon to be over – that meant mega-sales! A word to all brides: Don’t overlook your local mall or downtown. There are many beautiful dresses that are much less expensive than any dress you will find in a bridal store – simply because the word “Wedding” is not attached.
Because we had done so much research before shopping, we were able to skip past the dresses that weren’t what we wanted. After trying on a dozen gowns – maybe 15 at the most – we found a simple floor-length, A-line gown that looked great on all three girls and fit what I wanted for my bridal party! Joy reigned in the dressing rooms.
Then we looked at the price tag.
Here’s one more factor that can be a real killer. How much can you or your bridesmaids afford to spend? In our cases, we were all college students paying our own ways through school, or, in my sister’s case, still a minor with no source of income. My parents and I couldn’t afford to pay for three additional dresses, and my cousins certainly didn’t need the financial stress of paying three digits for a dress that they would only wear once.
Frantically, we looked through catalogs in the store. The pain of not being able to afford the dress that we’d all fallen in love with was eased by the fact that it also didn’t come in my color. We kept looking, but soon found that all the dresses were $175 and up. The floor-length gowns were usually $250 and higher. This was without the cost of alterations, shipping, and tax.
At this point, I realized that my mom, a good seamstress, could make the gown we wanted for under $100. The biggest plus was that she had already offered!
My cousins jumped on the idea and we immediately headed to the nearest fabric store and spent another hour finding patterns that were close to the dress we had wanted and taking pictures of the packages as well as writing down brand names and pattern numbers. After that, we browsed the actual fabrics, testing how they felt against our skin and how they worked with our complexions. We settled on a hunter green crepe satin for the outside and acetate for the lining.
Triumphant in our money-saving scheme, we went back to my house and informed Mom of our findings, ending the whole thing with, “Mom, I was thinking, you could make the gowns for a lot less. Would you be willing?”
She said, “yes” and opened the door for many new hurdles, which she will tell you about later.
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