Wedding dress - how to choose!

jojo2004

I've now tried on about 40 dresses (conservative estimate)...

I've found 4 I love - 3 of which are north of £2k, and one of which is affordable. I am struggling so hard to decide which one to pick, and time's a-ticking. The three expensive ones are all beautiful - but I don't know how much I'm influenced by:

• The feel of the fabric

• The loveliness of the shops in which I tried them (much more the experience I was hoping for)

• The knowledge of their prices (which also works against them, when I've got my MSE head on)

The affordable dress is gorgeous, but I don't have a photo of me in it, full front, smiling, as I do in the other three, so it's much harder to judge. Also it doesn't look so impressive in pics - partly because the shop was cluttered and badly lit. In the flesh, it's lovely. Really lovely.

Has anyone any advice? To what extent did you take into account how your dress looked in snaps (i.e. if you bought a dress that didn't look amazing in snaps in the shop, did it look lovely on the day, or did you actually find it showed up as not as lush in pics?) and to what extent did you go on what it looked like to the naked eye/in the mirror? I'm finding that looking back at pictures, the dresses look different to how I remember them looking to me in the mirror.

The affordable one is the sensible option on a lot of levels. The way I felt in the two other shops where I tried the three expensive ones seems to be influencing me a lot, and I don't know whether that's the dresses, or the 'experience'. Help! When I last tried on the sensibly priced dress, I was ready to buy it on the spot, based on how it looked (even in a sample that was far too small), and how I felt about it. Now I'm wavering.

All advice gratefully received.

ickle_yoda

Could you find another shop that stocks the affordable dress? Maybe trying it on in a different shop will help you decide?

Personally I'd go for the affordable one unless I could find one of the others at about half price but that's just because I'm tight!! :-D

jojo2004

Spam reported.

Thanks ickle yoda, that might work, except i can't even find a decent pic of the dress online!

Robinred

Hiya, I think don't worry if the photos of the cheap one don't look as gorgeous at the moment, are you having a professional photographer? Even if you are not I find photos taken with a posh camera with a big lens look 100s of times better than those from a normal digi camera. Also I think that it's the shape, style and detailing of the dress and your hair and face that show up in photos, not the quality of the fabric. Also if you want a posh fabric next to your skin you could perhaps get a silk underskirt or something. Maybe you could go back to the cheaper shop, and see if you can have a photo taken with a posh camera, and see if you can go outside in the dress to get better light and space. You could even take a rug to put on the floor outside so they can't moan about it getting dirty! That way you could feel more confident about your decision.

I think you are lucky that you have found one cheaper one that you love, I totally know what you mean about the atmosphere in the shop influencing you, it is hard to switch that kind of thing off. Good luck!