A few years ago, wedding dress designer Angela Piper was sworn to secrecy by a bride. “She felt her mum would not like the style and would be sure to let her know about it,” says Piper.
When the mother of the bride called her Sydney atelier, We Are Mancini, to ask about the dress, Piper simply told her it was “a beautiful silhouette that her daughter felt stunning in”.
The dance of keeping-everyone-happy that comes with wedding planning has long been a headache-inducing part of the celebration. It’s particularly heightened when shopping for a wedding dress. Relationship hierarchies and the pressure to look and feel your most beautiful can make the experience existentially and emotionally charged.
“Fittings are really nerve-racking,” says Andria Kiefer, the designer behind Melbourne’s Honeymoon Studios. Brides should choose who comes along wisely: “Don’t bring anyone that is going to be too opinionated. You want your hype girls. You want people to bring the vibe.”
This applies to both friends and family, but in particular, to mothers and daughters. “I see it all the time,” she says. “If you don’t have a good dynamic, don’t bring them. They’re not going to make you feel good in a fitting.”
Often mother-daughter tensions erupt – in their short-fused familial way – despite everyone meaning well. “The bride’s mum will say something like: ‘Is that meant to be like that?’ And you see this level-headed, lovely, chill, relaxed bride turn into this maniacal 13-year-old girl,” she says. “Tears can happen, or they leave angry. I want to stand up for them, but I can’t because I can’t be rude to someone’s mum.”
If a bride wants to feel truly calm and in control, Piper suggests attending the appointment alone or with just one companion. Women who do this are “the most relaxed brides I have met over years in the industry,” she says.
Another stumbling block on the way to the altar can be chasing what Kiefer calls the “Pinterest-dragon of a dress”. This is when a bride has fallen down a digital rabbit hole of wedding inspiration and ends up in obsessive pursuit of a photo-perfect dress.
Alanah Fryters, the brand and operations manager for Sant Elia Couture explains there are many reasons why a dress might not translate from pictures to reality. The bride may have a different body type to the model, plus a photo is static so it’s not possible to see how the model moves in the dress. A still image can conceal many truths about how a garment is constructed, or the fabric used to make it.
“There’re lots of ways you can pose models to get the best look out of a dress, even if it’s not perfectly fitting them,” she says. The key is to have an open mind and try on lots of different styles to find a dress that actually suits your shape. It also pays to heed the advice of professionals.
“We find that when brides push themselves into doing something that looks really great in a photo but maybe doesn’t suit their body type, it’s a struggle the entire way,” she says.
On one occasion, a bride insisted on having a very low scooped back, based on a photo. “Our creative director said right at the beginning: ‘Look, we can try but I don’t think it’s going to look the same on you.’” Fryters suggested giving the line of the back a V shape instead, but the bride said she was going to lose weight and wanted to go ahead with the scoop.
In the final fitting the bride realised it wasn’t right. The team were able to problem-solve, creating a V-back with a layer of sheer fabric. The finished dress was nearly identical to the design they had originally recommended.
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The service being offered by a boutique or designer can also lead to frustrations and misunderstandings. Some designers offer a ready-to-wear range that can be customised in minor ways, whereas a couture designer will create a design with their customers from scratch, in their exact proportions. For an exact replica of a photo (taking note of aforementioned pitfalls), it’s best to turn to a dressmaker. Meanwhile some bridal boutiques sell dresses in standard sizes that are made-to-order, but not made-to-measure.
Piper says brides are often measured in boutiques to figure out the right standard size to order the dress, while “made-to-measure is a different process, where a gown is custom made exclusively for the bride”.
Bridal boutiques that sell a range of different labels and made-to-order styles at a lower price point sometimes suggest the bride gets the dress altered once it has arrived, for a perfect fit. But brides should be aware of the risks involved. Boutiques are unlikely to accept a return if an altered dress is disappointing.
Sant Elia does alterations on dresses from all designers, and Fryters says they are often left to pick up the pieces when a retail assistant has overpromised.
“A lot of the bridal stylists are selling the dream and then it comes to us for alterations and the dream sort of dies,” she says. “They’ve told them it’s easy for the alterations people to do this, this and this, and it is going to fit you perfectly. Then we get it and we’re like, ‘OK, there’s a bit more to it than just taking in the back.’”
If a lot of alterations are required, things can get so expensive it might have been cheaper to have bought an entirely different dress in the first place. Fryters says dresses that lack structure because they do not have boning and dresses where the body is too long or short, “so the waist doesn’t actually sit on the client’s waist” are particularly challenging to fit.
The sweet spot for everyone seems to be a bride who knows what suits her, is open minded about different styles and seeks out a local designer whose work she trusts.
“We had a bride who used to drive past our old shop in Petersham and when she got engaged, she came to us straight away,” says Fryters. The instructions she provided were detailed but relatively conceptual: beading, some pearls, a semi sheer tulle bodice, an A-line skirt, and a neckline from one of their previous designs. “At the end, she said: ‘oh, it’s exactly what I wanted’.”