In cost-per-wear terms your wedding dress is likely to be by far the most expensive piece of clothing you’ll ever buy. And the likelihood is, you’ll never wear it again. Unless of course, your first marriage doesn’t work out and your next fiance is both frugal and unsentimental. Or, you do one of the following:
1. Trash it. This American tradition involves putting the dress back on and getting a photographer to shoot you destroying it on camera.
Run through forests, throw yourself in a river, roll in hay - whatever it takes for the perfect picture
2. Donate it. Oxfam have a number of specialist bridal departments that can make a decent amount of charity cash for your dress.
4. Dye it. No, not yourself, you’ll inevitably cock it up. Get professional dyers to do it. Worst case scenario is a polyester lining that’s shrunk and hasn’t taken the colour properly and has puckered the seams of your lovely lace outer, plus lace and beading that’s still its original colour.
Only silk dyes properly, anything synthetic wont really work (polyester, acetate, polyester satin). Nor will beading or lace. 2BirdStone on Etsy dyes your crinoline to order if you fancy.
Dye your wedding dress pale pink and have it shortened. Maybe it'll look a little like this Reiss dress...
5. Shorten it.
5. Turn it into throw cushions. Or a baby blanket, or a quilt.
Erica Mills, in California specialises into turning your dress into a Christening outfit
7. Preserve it. Get it dry cleaned pronto, before any stains have time to become part of the fabric. Then vacuum-pack it in a sealed carrier with acid-free tissue between the folds. Plastic can discolour fabric over time, so make sure you have tissue paper around the outside of the dress as well. Add moth repellant and keep it away from light for the next 30 years… until your daughters tell you they’re lesbians and even if they weren’t they’d never wear your dress anyway because it’s stained, moth-eaten and 30 years out of date.
Wow. A special boxes with plastic windows to keep you dress in.
Deconstruct old clothes and turn them into catwalk pieces
Cover off “something borrowed” by walking down the aisle in a recycled wedding dress. It will keep your carbon footprint light and fluffy and your wallet with a few pennies left in it.
For East Londoners, Junky Styling are specialists at creating something new from recycled clothing. They can either scour second hand shops and jumble sales for you to find beautiful pieces of lace to make your dream eco-dress or alter and re-fashion a piece of clothing you bring in. Run by Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager and a team of designers on Brick Lane, they’re immensely creative and admirably unpretentious. They’re not wedding specialists, but sometimes that can be a good thing. Here’s some they made earlier…
A little bit of rouging and a buttoned off-shoulder cowl neck
Recycled wedding dress by Junky Styling. Groom, bride's own.
Layers of vintage lace add interest to a simple silhouette
Vintage lace gets a make-over
Shortening an old wedding dress gives instant modernity.
Take a wedding dress, then shorten, add ruffles, and voila. Your wedding dress = pimped.
And if you’re really really on a budget, you can always fashion a wedding dress out of old white T-shirts…
A few T-shirts, some sewing skillz and by golly, that's your wedding dress sorted.
Put your feet up and shoe shop online with Zappos.com
Price Tag Shock Syndrome is frequently reported in regard to bridal shoes. The cost-per-wear is incredibly high and generally they’re icky, tasteless items. Here’s the Credit Crunch Bride’s guide to avoiding wasting vast amounts of cash on shoes you’ll never wear again:
1. Fashion first, wedding second. A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t dream of wearing that style normally, don’t let your fashion suffer for your wedding.
2. Don’t do white. Pewter, red, gold, taupe or silver are infinitely more re-wearable.
3. No one will see them. If you’re wearing a full length dress, get something cheap, comfy and not too high. It’s not as if anyone will ever know if you even wear trainers. Pick up cheapos from Monsoon and save your Jimmy Choo budget for another time.
From Monsoon's bridal collection - Marlena £55
4. Highstreet can work. Coast and Dune have lots of bridalish options.
Coast shoes in beige and silver now on sale for £29 - a bargainista's wet dream
As a bride, it is very likely your duties will include walking down an impossibly long aisle very slowly. Meanwhile a hundred or so guest will scan you up and down. You will be nervous. All eyes will be on you. Your hands will be shaking. This is where the bouquet comes in. It gives you something to do with your hands, other than fidget or flap. In that way, it makes sense.
However, bouquets can be eye-wateringly expensive. So what on earth do you hold in your shaking hands instead? Well, what you normally would, of course. A clutch.
Boden floral clutch - comes in 4 colours
Clutch from Viabella at Etsy
The clutch-instead-of-bouquet option has the distinct advantage of giving you a place to hide your lipstick etc.
All from Etsy: From L to R: The Spring Fling; Pinch Puff Clutch; Satin Wedding Clutch with Flower; Georgia Navy; Olivia Ivory; Peacock Feathers Clutch
This clutch with a luxurious bow is a wonderful bouquet replacement (again, Viabella at Etsy)
And if you’re going to have a clutch, why not replace the bridesmaids bouquets with clutches too. No truly fashion-loving bridesmaid would prefer a bouquet to one of these Nelle clutches.
Alice in Wonderland: the perfect Credit Crunch wedding theme
So, here’s the secret. If your wedding isn’t being planned by The World’s Leading Wedding Planner with a diploma in Co-ordinating Colours, and is rather more of the budget variety, the Alice in Wonderland theme could be for you. It excuses all sorts of ridiculous randomness, wonky home-made cakes, mismatching decorations and strange behaviour. In fact, it encourages it.
Courtesy of Bridalcheek
Here’s a few requirements to keep the Cheshire cat grinning and the Mad Hatter sipping:
1. Croquet.
Croquet with flamingoes as mallets and hedgehogs as balls
2. Wonky wedding cake. Get a friend to make one and encourage her to wonk it up.
3. Top hats. The more ridiculous and ill-fitting the better.
4. Eat me, drink me signs. These can be adapted for any situation throughout your venue. Drive me, follow me, avoid me, wee inside me etc.
5. Ornate tea cups for your very own Mad Hatter’s tea party. Indeed, add a tea party flavour to your canapes with tiny sandwiches and mini scones.
6. Whimsical nonsense such as stopped clocks.
Ushers with stripey socks: a must for all serious Lewis Carroll fans.
Flower girls have an alarming tendency of coming in not ones or twos, but threes or even fours. All that organza can stack up if you’re not careful. Luckily, if you avoid bridal shops and hit the high street you might just find something cute, fashionable, affordable and un-hated by its wearers. Who knows, they might (and this is of course a fabulous cliche), but they really might just wear them again.
1. Get flowergirl accessories from Monsoon. Their dresses are amazing too, and start from £55.
2. Go for the non-bridal girls dresses. Any long white girl’s dress with a sash ribbon at Marks & Spencer, especially in its Autograph range, is miraculously twice the price of its normal girls’ dresses.
Have more relaxed flowergirls with Marks & Spencer: pink dress £18, white dress £25
3. Try online kid’s clothing – La Redoute, Littlewoods or Boden do bright unpretensious summer dresses.
Pink floaty summer dress, £24, Boden.
£16- £24 at La Redoute
4. Have no fear of patterns. They can look remarkably chic.
Tea dress, £16-21, Next
5. Co-ordinating colours can work too. And if the girls are sisters, they can re-wear them more easily.
Boden gypsy dress, £22
6. Love the High Street. Next, BHS and Debenhams are big winners. Even Tesco can look cute on really little ones.
Flower Embroidered Bridesmaid Dress £30, Signature Vintage Bridesmaid Dress £36, both from Next
If you’re going to shell out for a beautiful dress, you might as well get the most beautifully designed one you can. And unless you’re an astoundingly talented dress designer, it’s probably worth taking some inspiration from some of the most beautiful classic long dresses known to womankind. In other words, if you’re going to steal, do it from Waitrose rather than Costcutters.
Joan Crawford:
Joan Crawford wears a streamlined dress as Letty Lynton in 1932, designed by Adrian. It demonstrates the fashion for classical drapery with its bias-cutting, draping and wrap details."
Greta Garbo:
Greta Garb
Rita Hayworth:
Rita Hayworth in a pink and silver lame evening dress designed by the famed Hollywood designer Howard Greer.
The hunt for an affordable wedding dress is a long and arduous one. The hunt for an affordable, slinky, 1930s inspired wedding dress not made of polyester or covered in stains, is a long, arduous, grueling and time-consuming one. Here’s a load of general tips for finding a cheap wedding dress that I blogged about earlier. Here’s where the hunt has taken me so far:
1. Personal shopper at Selfridges - Great service with two assistants running around the designer floor looking for non-bridal designer dresses. I found this amazing blue Balenciaga dress. Unfortunately it was £1300. Oh.
3. Ritva Westenius Despite being outrageously posh, they were very nice here. I found two beautiful dresses, ‘Eleanor’ and ‘Gilda’, which I’m now scouring the net for second hand versions in size 10. Anyone?
Ritva Westenius 'Gilda'
4. Caroline Castigliano. Here I was asked by a very frightening Miss Haversham type what sort of wedding I was going to have, as she eyed me up, trying to work out how rich I was.
“A nice one?” I replied. It went downhill from there. The only slinky, non-meringue dress was by Sharon Hoey. Again, I’m now on the hunt online for a second hand one (size 10, bias cut, cowl back,no cleavage anyone?)
This lady is selling hers for 1000 euros, size 8
5. Etsy seller Miss Bombshell ticked my fancy with this silk charmeuse number.
Miss Bombshell's 1930s dress. Found by etsywedding. $500
To wear a veil or not to wear a veil, that is today’s question. There’s something just a little crazy about a young woman draping herself in netting. However, on one’s wedding day a small dose of crazy can a good thing. Wear a small birdcage veil on your face, and no one will notice that your dress pulls slightly under the arms; adorn your hair with a silk flower and the plainest of dresses will seem glamorous. Here’s a selection of affordable headpieces to turn you into the star of your own wedding drama:
1. The fabric flower. Elegant, and reusable as a corsage/ brooch.
Ivory organza flower £85 from Million Design
2. A vintage wax blossom headband. Here’s a secret. I don’t actually want to tell you about this because I’d quite like one for my own wedding, and I wouldn’t want them to sell out. However, I saw some cryingly wonderful ones at Annie’s Vintage, on Camden Passage, Islington, London at the weekend. £48 a pop.
This one isn't from Annie's Vintage, but it's similar
3. The birdcage veil – easy to DIY if you’re getting your hair put up. Also, not quite as OTT as the full scale veil
4. Crazy feathers for the crazy bride within.
Feather headband for just 35 of your American dollars on Etsy
5. Diamante clips. A profusion of these can make you look a million dollars.
For the more relaxed bride, Reiss has some chic cream cocktail dresses on sale. There’s also some silvery satin stilettos on sale. Have a look at the three-tone cream, nude and grey stilettos in their spring range. They are sensational.
On sale in Reiss for £100
Jamie dress from Reiss
There’s also some re-wearable dresses for bridesmaids.
So, I’ve blogged about Oxfam Brides before, on Credit Crunch Weddings Dresses. However, now I can blog with the benefit of experience. Yes indeed, I am now endowed with the experience of one Leatherhead Oxfam Bridal department, just round the M25.
After a particularly filling afternoon tea on Leatherhead’s High St, my friend and I (both soon to be wed), headed off to our appointment upstairs at Oxfam. Admittedly, upstairs at a charity shop is not where most little girls imagine finding their dream dress. However, the assistant was very nice and didn’t seem to have any Cruella De Ville tendencies at all. There was a good 80 dresses, 79 of them unworn and direct from designers, and hardly any were nasty polyester.
More to the point, my friend found her dress, an raw silk, ivory, high halter neck, mermaid creation for £300. I’m sure it was by some outrageously expensive designer, but the labels had been cut off.
Leatherhead bridal shop
It’s probably time you made all your white wedding dreams come true at Oxfam Bridal.
It’s enough to turn you to Andrew Lloyd Webber. OK, nothing could be that bad. However, The Bridesmaid Issue is a thorny one. The more popular you are, the more The Wedding God punishes you. Here’s how to keep bridesmaids costs in line with your bank balance:
1. Buy plain high street dresses. Reiss, J Crew and Banana Republic will give you some thing nicer, cheaper, more fashionable and less taffeta-based than any bridal shop.
J Crew's Erez range
2. Each bridesmaid has their own colour. If Sex in The City can do it, so can you.
Sex in the City
Indeed, you can even create a rainbow icecream effect, like these lovelies:
By Kay Unger
3. Bridesmaid’s all wear black. This marvellously simple tip was was sent in by Elizabeth. See what else the lovely Elizabeth has done to keep prices in check for her wedding here.
4. Don’t have bridesmaids. If you’re over 30, or are developing fine lines, it’s undignified anyway.
5. Go young with bridesmaids. The younger they are the less they’ll realise what a cheapskate you’re making of them.
6. Let them wear what they like. They’ll probably thank you. No one ever uses bridesmaid’s dresses again, however much they lie to you they will. It’s a science fact.
7. Buy hair accessories, matching ribbons and bouquets, not dresses.
Vintage can be the cheapest of all themes. Followed closely by ’shabby chic’. Here’s how to win at Vintage in a few easy steps:
1. Get a repro dress made - Find a fabulous vintage dress, then get it copied. The one below is from a museum, but would probably look far better on you.
1930s antique dress with bugle beads
2. Raid your grandparents’ attics – everything shabby can be used.Old jars, old fabric, even old suitcases.
Battered old suitcase becomes box for programs
3. Get guests to go vintage. A 1920s theme is easy for example. A pencilled on moustache for the chaps, a couple of tassels and headbands for the ladies, and suddenly the ice is broken. It’s one of the peculiarities of the English that their incredible stuffiness can be dispelled with the aid of a few items of fancy dress.
4. Roll out a vintage crooner – not necessarily any more expensive than Dave’s Disc, and altogether more classy.
Frankly, I pity people who got married before the Internet. They wouldn’t be able to do all these amazing things:
1. Automatically save every draft of your wedding seating plan, invite list or budget on Google Docs. you’ll need a Gmail account (easy to set up) and then you can access it from any PC so you’lll be able to update it from work or home. You can also share the document online with your beloved. He can make amends which you can both see, like adding yet another guest who you barely know and care very little for.
2. Invite everyone via Facebook. Set up an event, keep the settings on ’secret’ and the guest list hidden and you’re all go.You can add photos, videos and details.
3. Get your dress made up in China by an Ebay power seller for a song, in the safety of knowing the last few hundred customers were all happy with the service. TopRunway comes highly recommended if you’re going for a non-weddingish sort of gown.
4. Do price comparisons on everything before you buy.
5. Research everything. When information like the top 10 most popular (or cliched) wedding dances is available online, you have no excuse for kicking things off with ‘Lady in Red’. Then again, there’s never any excuse for that.
a) Fold up a fiver really small. Stand in gutter. Squish said fiver through grill of drain.
b) Buy a brand new non-sale wedding dress from a bridal shop.
The beauty of used wedding dresses is that they really will have been worn just once. However, thousands insist on paying double or even triple to be the first wearer of their dress. It defies all logic, even the logic of a bride drunk on romance, to do this in our redundancy-infused times. Here’s some tips on finding the perfect bankruptcy-avoiding dress:
1.Take window shopping to a whole new level. Go to as many ghastly over-priced bridal shops as you can, and try as many wedding dresses on as they’ll let you. Lie flamboyantly about your budget so you get to try the best dresses. Make sure you take down the names/ product codes of the dresses.
2. Get serious with Ebay. Set up a search for the exact model and make of dress you like, save it and receive updates when one comes on the market.
There’s also online shops specifically for second hand wedding dresses, but they tend to be a bit more expensive.
3. Go old school. Well, vintage anyway. Camden market has a great range of vintage bridal dresses. Or if you want to go a little more upmarket, there’s The Vintage Wedding Dress Company for about a grand a pop.
The Vintage Wedding Dress Company
4. Book into Oxfam Brides. They’ve got 10 bridal departments, mainly full of unworn designer dresses. Make an appointment at a branch, they’re all do-gooder charity types, so are extra helpful. Good ones are Bracknell, Leatherhead, Southhampton, Eastbourne. Expect to pay £250 a dress. At that sort of price, you could buy two. Hell, save the second one for your second wedding.
Oxfam Brides
5. Borrow your mate’s. It’s crazy, but it just might work.
6. Never forget China. A billion tailors, all waiting for your custom. They’ll do rip offs of anything you can get clear pictures of. If you can manage to measure yourself properly (or get a friendly local seamstress to) then they can make it.
7. Don’t under-estimate the high street. Monsoon, Littlewoods and the American J Crew all do great dresses for £200-350. And if you’re a big fan of polyester, there’s always the BHS wedding outfit with shoes for £100.
J Crew Erez dress for $395
8. Don’t wear white. Amazingly, you won’t turn into a pumpkin if you walk up the aisle in dove grey. Gold or any metallic has an element of theatricality, and red during winter rocks. Then you can get a designer dress without any Bride Tax.
9. Get a personal shopper. They’re free at Liberties, Selfridges and many department stores. They can help you get an idea of what shape suits you, or even find you a non-bridal dress which just happens to be white.
10. Go knee-length. Knee length dresses in ivory pretty much never get hit with Bride Tax.
er. They’re free at Liberties, Selfridges and many department stores. They can help you get an idea of what shape suits you, or even find you a non-bridal dress which just happens to be white.
