The Bridesmaid Dress Debate

There are endless articles covering the negative side of buying bridesmaid dresses from China and from websites where designer copies are made for a fraction of the price.

So what do you do when you are on a budget and the average bridesmaid dress retails around the £200 mark?

I would like to make clear that I do not agree with people coping designers work and passing it off as a genuine piece and I also think that designer copies are disrespectful to the craftsmanship, skill and attention to detail that goes into each designer gown.

Everyday sites are shut down and brides are left out of pocket with alteration fee's to try and make the best out of what they have purchased or in the worst cases having to buy new dresses meaning they are paying full price plus the cost of the wasted dresses.

So what are the other options?

There are high street shops that sell a fantastic selection of bridesmaids dresses. 

Here is a selection from BHS Their dresses range from £36 for children up to around £120 for adults.

It is also a good idea to keep an eye out for bridal sample sales especially if you only have 1 or 2 bridesmaids.

When I was looking for dresses I kept getting tempted by sights such as 'lightinthebox' but was also scared off by reviews stating escalating postage costs and poorly fitting dresses. I ended up researching dress makers that rather than selling designer copies sold a small selection of there own bridesmaids dresses. I came across a business called 'littlepridebride' on ebay. All of the reviews were positive and I was able to both speak to the lady that fronted the business via telephone and frequent email conversation. 

The amount of communication and help I received put my mind at ease and I felt completely confident processing my order. 

The Order for 6 Bridesmaids dresses took around 5 weeks from start to finish. I was really happy with the quality and how the dresses looked. They had a heavy weight to them and were beautifully lined. There wasn't a wonky seam in sight. I also didn't have to worry about escalating postage costs as they were shipped to the UK office before being sent to me. My dresses averages out at £45 per dress.  

Here are the photo's of my Bridesmaids in their dresses.

Picture taken by Alex Lawrence Photography
http://alexlawrencephotography.com/

Here are some tips for if you're looking to buy your dresses online.

1) Do your research! review, review, review. 

2) Measure three times

3) Match your measurements to the nearest dress size rather than buying custom dresses. This will make them easier to alter. The only thing that I customised was the length for the taller ladies.

4) Factor in alteration costs 

5) If you have any doubts or niggles then DO NOT ORDER!

Decoration - To buy or to hire?

In the last few posts we have talked about where to buy wedding decoration and looking at the DIY options and if it's better to buy or to hire.
In this post I will go through how I decorated our hall and how much I spent on creating the final look. 

here's a few of my lovely helpers that made my vision a reality:)

We hired Chalton Village Hall for our wedding reception. Village Halls tend to be quite reasonable and cost as little as £15 per hour. Due to the low cost we decided to hire the hall the day before the wedding to give us plenty of time to make everything perfect.

I chose to purchase most of the decoration and hired just the tables and the wine coolers.

I really enjoyed setting up the hall the day before the wedding. It was fun seeing it all come together and I got to spend time and build memories with family and friends. I also have a lot of respect for the people that do this for a profession. 

I feel that picking a venue where I had to plan and organise every detail was both the most brave and refreshing thing that I could have done. The venue dictated the theme which was in-keeping with my original ideas. I started looking for inspiration and shopping around for key pieces around a year before the wedding. I had no idea whether I wanted to hire a decoration company or do it alone. I had never planned a wedding or even a party before so this was a new experience for me. 

I knew how many guests we were having which helped me to be able to plan how many tables we needed and how best to position them. We had 100 gusts and our hall was fairly small. We went for two long rows of trestle tables to allow clean lines and clear walking routes.

I now had the template to draw out my table plan inspiration. I knew I wanted vintage birdcages and that's where I started my research and found these...

I came across them in B&M and they only cost £2.97 each. To decorate them I used ribbon and Hessian string £1 each from Tiger and paper roses hand crafted in Thailand £1.85 for 50 eBay. I sold 12 of the 15 centrepieces for the same price as I paid. The remaining cages went into my memory box.

the most costly and time consuming item to purchase were the chair covers. I wanted Ivory cotton covers which worked out around £2-£3 each to hire. After lots of bidding and just missing out, I purchased 165 covers for £175 and went on to sell them for the same price! But be warned laundering 165 chair covers is a time consuming job and does add to the cost.

I managed to purchase 18 tablecloths for £46 which works out £2.55 per table cloth, which is half the price of the average selling price. I sold these for the same price.

I purchased my chair sashes from a higher company for £45 for 115 sashes. I then sold these for £35.

As you can see I saved quite a lot of money from buying and selling on. the preparation and set did take a lot of time, so do make sure you consider that when booking your hall and planning your final few days before your wedding. 

Here is the breakdown of my costs 
Chair covers        £175
Chair sashes        £45
Tablecloths         £46
Centre pieces       £50
Large Centre pieces £22
Burgundy Napkins    £40

Table hire          £57
Wine cooler hire    £9.50             Total amount £444.50 

Money from selling on items  £336.00 

The total spent on wedding decoration came to £108.50 

The hire company that I used and would highly recommend were Jaspers Luton.