Once you’ve said ‘Yes’ to the proposal its time to search for that all important dress to be worn on the most important day of your life, lets face it all your guests are coming to see you and your dress, along with having a jolly old knees up too! They say that the three things guests talk about after a wedding is what the bride wore, the food & the hangover, get it right and you will have the wedding of the year, get it wrong and well who would want to be the negative one they talk about!
So! before you have a total meltdown over how much weddings cost, whilst you think that the internet is the only cheaper option available, let me share our expertise with you, to advise you how to spend your budget wisely on quality rather than ‘cheaply’ on a fake dress!
Let’s face it, we buy a lot off the internet these days from everyday clothes to fancy food, it all seems so easy and stress free, a few clicks of a button and voila a nice parcel arrives a few days later…how easy was that ? So! naturally after adding up the cost of your wedding, you may feel a few corners may need to be cut here and there in order for you to sleep that little bit easier at night, which is why many couples turn to the internet to buy the next big ticket item after the wedding venue…The Wedding Dress !
Sadly bridal shops are often wrongly labelled as ‘expensive’ and if you’ve visited a not so friendly bridal shop, then there is no wonder that you may turn to the internet to purchase your dream dress, which is a crying shame for us, we work incredibly hard to provide a bridal experience for our bride’s to treasure whilst sourcing the most fabulous gowns from our very talented designer’s, you certainly won’t be faced with a Julia Robert’s moment featured in the Pretty Woman film when you visit our boutique, we treat all our bride’s how we would like to be treated and our standards are pretty high, so you certainly won’t be disappointed.
Your internet purchase can’t provide you with a bridal experience whilst offering you professional advice on styles, fabrics and accessories, neither will it provide a skilled bridal seamstress for any alterations, they also won’t provide you with a current, new made to order designer bridal gown, which has been made by a highly skilled seamstress, using quality fabrics and authentic embellishments. Chances are if there is a problem with your internet purchase it will cost more to return, if they accept returns that is! You also need to consider any customs charges if your dress is being shipped from overseas, customs & excise are becoming increasingly vigilant with counterfeit goods and they are now starting to seize counterfeit wedding dresses, meaning all your money will be lost and you may be left with nothing.
In the last ten years we have not seen one successful wedding dress purchase off the internet but what we have seen is many an upset, stressed and anxious bride some weeks, some even days before their wedding with no wedding dress, due to their internet purchase being made of poor materials with shoddy workmanship and plastic beads glued! OMG! I’ve worn better fancy dress costumes than some of the disasters I have seen!
It’s also a heart breaking situation for me to be faced with a bride who is uncontrollably sobbing in front of me, holding this piece of shiny, glittery fabric that’s supposed to be a designer bridal gown, in the hope that I really am a fairy godmother and one wave of my magic wand will solve all her problems… sadly I can’t perform miracles, I can only try and find a dress that will hopefully turn the bride’s frown into a smile, but I always wonder if at this late stage that it’s because she has found a high quality wedding dress that fits or is it really her dream dress? Only the bride will know when she looks back at her wedding album in the years to come.
We have in the past had bride’s visit us with no intention of buying from us which makes us sad, we are simply being used as a styling service for them to buy what they think is the same dress off the internet, they have simply been fooled by the internet seller who has used the designer’s image without the designer’s permission, to entice the bride to buy their knock off copy, its not until the dress arrives that the realisation and panic starts to set in, lets face it if I could buy designer gowns off the internet for a fraction of the price, then why would we bother with buying from designer’s direct? However what the tricked bride is buying is a counterfeit item that’s been made, using cheap labour, cheap materials which always bares no resemblance to the designer image that was used to buy the said item, there’s also facebook pages of UK sellers buying counterfeit goods from overseas and selling through their facebook page, this offers the buyer no protection and should you complain, you find that you are promptly blocked from the page, not great customer service! There’s also a dedicated website and facebook page www.bridesaware.com https://www.facebook.com/BridesBeware created to alert bride’s of the dangers of buying online, this has saved many a bride of wasting her hard earned cash on a too good to be true wedding dress purchase.
The Daily Mail recently published an article of buying online, just have a read for yourself http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2909093/Angry-brides-share-bridal-gown-horror-stories.html
If you have a strict dress budget that you just don’t want to go over, then all you have to do is tell us! We have gowns that are no longer repeatable styles that we have to sell to make way for new stock, they are all in immaculate condition and ready to buy off the rail, so don’t be shy!
I guess what I am trying to say is that, Yes! Bridal Shops are a little more expensive than the internet but don’t forget a bridal shop has over-heads to pay for, whilst all sample gowns all have to be bought too! Sadly we don’t get them for free! BUT! what you are buying into is the expertise of the staff, beautiful surroundings with the quality and re-assurance that you are buying a genuine designer gown, whilst also having a positive and stress free experience that you will treasure forever, PLUS when you buy your dream dress from Elegance Bridal Studio you will receive FREE Wedding Dress Insurance, fully protecting your deposit and covering your gown against accidental damage or theft once you take your gown home, alongside having direct access to our highly skilled bridal seamstress, whilst we can also point you in the right direction for your other wedding suppliers, so we can do a little bit of being your fairy godmother whilst you will be joining our very elegant family too!
So! please don’t forget if you can’t touch it, see it or try it on, before you part with your hard earned cash, please think twice and shop local, we would love to meet you and show you our beautiful gowns x
Remember all eyes are on you the Bride, its better to be remembered for the right reasons, not the wrong ones!