How to Prepare for Shopping for Your Wedding Dress

One of the most important parts of your wedding day is finding the dress that you decide to wear. You can feel confident and look radiant as you make your appearance before walking down the aisle to meet your groom. Here are a few important tips to follow to choose the perfect gown.

Choose Your Venue Before Finding the Dress

Many brides make the mistake of choosing their wedding gown before they’ve decided where they’ll get married. The wedding dress should complement the location of the wedding and the style of the event. Avoid shopping around for a dress until you decide if you’ll have a backyard wedding or you want to wed your spouse in a lavish ceremony.

Determine Your Budget

You’ll need to determine what you can afford before you fall in love with a gown. The salesman will ask what your budget is when you begin shopping at local stores or boutiques, which will influence what gowns you try on. The wedding gown typically makes up 15 percent of the wedding budget and should also include the cost of alterations or accessories that you plan to purchase. After the dress arrives, it may also need professional steaming or pressing, which can cost hundreds of dollars.

You can also shop at annual sales that are available to get a discount and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on designer gowns.

Avoid Waiting Until the Last Minute

Start early when you begin shopping around for wedding dresses Columbus. Waiting until the last minute can cause you to become confused and make an impulse purchase that you’re not happy with on the wedding day. You’ll also need to have enough time for the dress to be altered and resized multiple times.

Bring a Few Friends Along

It’s important to have a few opinions of your family members or friends when you’re trying on the dresses to determine what complements your figure and features. Consider bringing two or three people with you as you shop around to get their opinions and have additional feedback. Avoid bringing more than four people, which can cause too many people to have their input with the decision that you make.