The Tamesis
We’ve long believed that you should feel your most beautiful and happiest on your wedding day. Not only will you be radiant with the love you share with your partner, but you’ll also be wearing the wedding dress of your dreams – a sartorial piece of your choice that can hold deep meaning and account for a large portion of your wedding budget. Having invested so much money and emotion, the process of finding this dress should be filled with a similar sense of joy, right? Well, if you’re not a bridal sample size, think again.
Unlike going to a typical ready-to-wear store, it’s almost unheard of for a luxury bridal store to offer complete sizes of gowns for customers to try on. Instead, they may offer bridal sizes 8 or 10 (equivalent to US street sizes 4-6 or 6-8), and occasionally offer size 16 or 18 options, which are closer to 12-14 or 14-16. In many cases, when a bride comes to see a display of luxury wedding dresses, the only options available in the collection will be fashion show samples, which are closer to size 2. If you purchase a dress, we will take measurements to see what size you can order from the brand’s size chart. If you’re outside the range, you may have to pay more to have custom pieces made to get the same designer look in a larger outfit.
Simply put, it’s rare for a bride-to-be to try on a dress that feels like it will fit perfectly before ordering. If you’re too small for the sample, the stylist will use giant clips on the back of the garment to adjust it to your size. Too big? They might unzip a skirt, pin it shut, or add a fabric panel in the back to create the illusion that it’s closed. You may have difficulty putting a piece of clothing on your body and see the fabric bunched up instead of lying flat. In the worst-case scenario, you might be asked to hold the garment up to your body and imagine what it would look like on you before making a $10,000 purchase.
“In an ideal world, the process should be joyful, and dressing yourself for the occasion should feel special,” says Alysia Cole, a body-conscious bridal stylist who works with many plus-size clients. “Instead, it often hurts your view of yourself and brings a lot of your own body issues to the surface. I have a lot of clients who have experienced eating disorders and they tell me they thought they were in a good place, and then they started buying clothes. Everything was triggered again.”
As someone who typically wears a small, I had an easier time trying on wedding dresses than most when preparing for my wedding last fall. Still, I had a hard time trying on some of the sample sizes and I completely gave up trying to pull them over my hips. I admit, I often leave a date more focused on my body than before and planning how to stay healthy leading up to the wedding. But for the average American woman between a size 14 and 16, it’s a much more difficult experience when the sample size to try is so limited. Just the other day, a friend who wears a size six mentioned that high-end wedding dress brands can barely fit her into their dresses.
Cole did notice. yes The difference between a bridal store that is considered “luxury” and a store that is not. Lower-priced stores, like David’s Bridal, may have a wider selection of sizes to try on, while some stores with luxury options, like Kleinfeld, are known for their wider selections. There are also several plus-size bridal shops across the country, but they usually don’t have as many high-end brands. When working with plus-size brides who want to wear luxury designer clothing, Cole will often take them to one of the stores to actually try it on to see what looks right for them, before going to luxury salons and showrooms to see designs that better suit the style.
