Best Wedding Gown For Your Dream Day

Start Earlier Than You Think You Need To

Most gowns take four to six months to order, and another six weeks for alterations on top of that. We began shopping a full year before the wedding and still felt rushed by the end. If your date is inside nine months, say so on the first phone call — some boutiques keep a rail of samples they can sell off the floor, and a good seamstress can do remarkable things with a dress that already fits.

The first appointment is not for buying. It is for finding out what you actually like, which is almost never what you saved to a mood board. I had eleven photographs of sleek satin column dresses and walked out having fallen for something with a full tulle skirt.

Bring One Person, Not Six

This is the advice I give most often and the advice people ignore most often. Six opinions in a fitting room will talk you out of the dress you love. Everyone means well, and everyone is imagining the wedding they would have had.

Choose one person who knows how to ask questions instead of giving verdicts. My mother came to every appointment and said almost nothing until I asked. When I put on the one, she started crying before I had finished turning around, and that was the whole conversation.

What To Ask At Every Appointment

Ask what the dress will cost once alterations are included, because that number is rarely the number on the tag. Ask how many fittings are in the price. Ask whether the sample you are wearing is your size, and if not, what will change. Ask to see the back, which is what your guests will look at for most of the ceremony.

Sit Down In It

Walk in it. Dance a little. Reach for a glass as though someone has just handed you one. You will spend twelve hours in this dress and perhaps forty minutes of that standing still and being photographed.

The gown that photographs best is not always the one you can breathe in, and by nine in the evening you will not care at all how the neckline reads on camera. Mine had a hidden pocket sewn into the side seam, which I did not ask for and would now insist on.

A Note On Second Guessing

Every person I know had a week of doubt somewhere between ordering and collecting. It passed for all of them the moment they put the dress on with their hair done. If it is still there at the final fitting, say something — a good boutique would rather change a neckline than watch you walk down the aisle in something you have stopped loving.