The Bridal Diaries – The Wedding Dress

In the third entry of The Bridal Diaries – The Dress, Tamara shares her wedding dress shop-a-thon experience in the search for ‘the one.’

OMG! It’s getting close. As I am writing this there are only five weeks to go until my wedding day. I’m feeling ALL the emotions and writing about the countdown always makes me feel slightly sick.

I had the exact picture of what I wanted in my head. My inspiration was Galia Lahav bridal gowns (pictured) which are renowned for their delicate embroidery, dramatic trains and plunging backs. Easy, right? Wrong! Getting my wedding dress was really important and trying the various dresses on was a big deal and quite emotional. However, the whole experience wasn’t at all how I expected it to be.

I had this vision of finding ‘the one’ and bursting into tears because the dress was everything I had always dreamed of. You hear these stories and expect your experience to be the same. Well, I wanted to be truthful with everyone, so other brides-to-be don’t feel as overwhelmed as I did. I found wedding dress shopping extremely stressful. When I tried on the gowns which were in the style I was after, they were always way too long for me. At five foot two I am a little on the short side (well, they do say all good things come in small packages) and the dresses could only have been designed for six foot supermodels. Once the dress was on and taken up to the correct length for me, all the detailing that I loved was lost. All I was left with was a pretty plain looking wedding gown.

I also found that many of the shop assistants weren’t as attentive as I had anticipated either. At first they told me everything looked amazing (even when I know it looked hideous) and, when I didn’t find ‘the one’ in the first few dresses, they quickly lost interest. This is a big moment for any woman and I just felt the assistants could have been a little more helpful.

In the end I did find a dress; it’s nothing at all like I imagined and I am not giving you any more clues, you’ll just have to wait for the big reveal on the day.

Please join me for my next blog as I share all my wedding planning highs and lows.