when your dress comes in: a warning

i’ve had this conversation with three people in the last two weeks, so now i must share this very random thought with you… it’s sort of a mild warning:

when you order your wedding dress from your bridal store, they will order the size that fits the largest part of your body. so say your bust and waist are a size 8 but your hips are a size 10, they’ll suggest you order the size 10. you’re thinking, yeah heidzilla, i know that. yes, i know you know that. i knew that when i ordered my dress. but here’s what you might not realize:

when your dress comes in and you rush to the store to go try it on because it’s brand new and crisp and clean and it’s your size and it’s yours and it’s your dress, YOUR WEDDING DRESS! and it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally in after all those weeks of waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

it’s going to be way.too.big.

well yeah, it’ll be a little bigger in places you’re thinking? no. it’s going to hang like a sack on you and you might even need those industrial clippy thingies to keep it on – especially if it’s strapless.

that’s it? you’re thinking.

well, yes, that’s it. you might go into the store thinking you’re going to put on YOUR dress that you’ve paid hundreds (maybe thousands?) of dollars for and it’s going to fit you perfectly immediately. but it won’t. it will take you another few hundred of dollars and maybe three or four more trips to the bridal salon to get it to fit you as perfectly as you thought it was going to the day it came in.

i just wanted to warn you. i warned a few people and they didn’t believe me.  they went in, got pretty shocked… upset… scared… and then even angry at their bridal store… thinking they might have ordered the WRONG size. They were even concerned it would NEVER fit the way it was supposed to.  

But don’t worry. Post-alterations all that stress and fear and anxiety will subside!!! it will fit. (unless you have a really bad seamstress, but that’s a whole other blog post… or two.)

as my random thoughts tend to be from my personal experience, of course, i do a photo to sort of show you what i mean. here’s me in my wedding dress the day it came in- no alterations. and it hung… like.a.sack… i was swimming in it!

but three alterations later,  i had a perfectly-fitting wedding dress.

and now you can’t say that no one warned you!