Tips to Make your Wedding Dress Shopping Day One in a Million

fashionwedding

Sep 26

Written By

Hi everyone! As most of you may know I went wedding dress shopping this past weekend at White Magnolia in Jacksonville, and it was literally a dream come true. This was the first store I had been too, and it exceeded my expectations. If anyone asks, I will always speak highly of the service and atmosphere of the boutique and will absolutely tell them I found my dream dress there. I decided I wanted to write this blog post to help all my other girlfriends out while shopping for one of the biggest purchases for their BIG DAY! I understand everyone has different views on certain things regarding HOW they shop for their dress, but here is what I learned on this perfect day!

MAKE AN APPOINTMENT. Point blank. It gives you a certain amount of time to roam around the store with no other customers, and you have the employee's automatic attention, there will be no one interrupting your precious time. You also don't have to worry about walking out in a stunning dress, and a customer yelling, "Oh, I want to try on that next!" White Magnolia, the boutique I went to, is appointment only on the weekends and I love why they do that! It made my shopping adventure 100 x more amazing.

BRING HEELS. Any dress you try on is not going to look 100% right unless you bring the type of shoes you plan on wearing for your big day. Same with jewelry, if you have a piece of jewelry you already know you want to wear because it is sentimental to you, bring it. Some styles of jewelry and dress materials do not look good together.

BRING PICTURES OF THE DRESS STYLES YOU ADMIRE. So I printed out pictures of dresses and styles I absolutely loved WHILE still keeping an open-mind. Bringing the pictures helped because it showed the employee I was working with exactly what I did and did not like. I didn't want to try to explain it to her and her have the wrong picture. By doing this, she was able to point me in the right direction of the boutique where these styles of dresses were. Obviously, you don't have to print the pictures out, with Pinterest apps and google it is a lot easier now-a-days.

BRING FAMILY & FRIENDS WHO YOU TRUST & VALUE THEIR OPINION. This is a piece of advice that is tossed back and forth with people and I'm sure everyone knows why. I brought my mom & a handful of my bridesmaids (7 people total) because I value each and every one of their opinions. They know me the best, they know my style the best, they want me to look beautiful and feel amazing on the biggest day of my life this far. If those types of people aren't your bridesmaids, then I'm sorry! I am so happy they helped me pick out my dream dress Saturday.

TRY ON MULTIPLE STYLES. You never know unless you try. I had a certain style of dress I wanted, and when we started looking through all the dresses, the employee and my bridesmaids were saying you should try these on just to see if you may like them. At first, I was like whatever, I'll just make them happy and try it on. Well, I ended up LOVING one of them... it was actually the one I purchased. My advice to you is just to expect the unexpected. Don't be afraid to venture out of the style you absolutely love, because with any wedding dress you can't go wrong.

PUT A VEIL ON. This kind of goes with the tip about bringing heels and jewelry. After you find the one or final two/three dresses you have fallen in love with. Put a veil on and make it real....get the whole picture. I was between two dresses, and when I put the perfect veil on it absolutely came together and I knew the exact dress I was going to choose. Such an exciting moment!

GO WITH YOUR GUT. If you're down to a handful (I'm talking like 2 or 3) dresses, try them on multiple times back to back. Walk around the boutique in them, dance a little bit, stare at yourself, put a veil on. Get the complete picture with the final dresses. After doing all of these things, you should be able to know which dress is FOR SURE FOR YOU!!!! I tried on my final two dresses about 3 times each back to back to back. I loved multiple things about each of them, and had to choose what I couldn't spend my big day without having. Finally, I knew which one to choose.

IF YOU CRY, YOU KNOW. So I actually laughed at this... I've always said I'm not going to cry, that's dumb. Let me just tell you, when I put the veil on and turned around, there was not a dry eye in the room. All five of my bridesmaids + my mom were crying which of course led to me crying!! PSA: WEAR WATERPROOF MASCARA!!! It is such a magical moment, and like I said I knew right then that was my dress.

HAVE THE MOST FUN!!! This is one of the biggest days of wedding planning. Finding your perfect dress is a dream come true. Make sure you bring the bubbly so you can celebrate afterwards!

I have said this multiple times, but my experience was one in a million. I'm positive you can have the same! :-) Don't stress, have fun, and drink bubbly. Everything will turn out perfect!