After coming down from the high of getting engaged, the first thing I started to do was look at wedding dresses! I bought loads of wedding magazines and looked on the internet and started to get an idea of what kind of dress I wanted.

One thing I knew right off the bat was that I didn't want a huge, puffy, wedding cake dress. I prefer a slim silhouette, something more fitted, and strapless, cut straight across the top rather than a sweetheart neckline. I also wanted to have some kind of beading or crystals to make it look like a real wedding dress and not just a white evening gown, but not too much, just a little big of bling.

One thing became apparent to me straight away. If I wanted to wear a dress with a slim silhouette, I was going to have to lose some weight! So I started an exercise regime and changed my diet to eat healthier food (see my blog post on Wedding Weight Loss). After several months of this, I felt slim enough to try on some dresses!

The first place I went to was Pronovias. They have a fantastic flag ship store in London where you are given your own consultant and glasses of champagne - lovely! They had some amazing dresses, but nothing that quite fit the bill. The dress I liked the most was the one below shown on a model, it had some great embroidery work on it and I liked the interesting neckline, but it had a large poofy skirt and was REALLY heavy, I could barely move in it, so I decided against it.

I then went to the Vera Wang sample sale at Selfridges. I found a dress that was almost perfect, and at half the regular price! That's me trying it on in the picture below. However, being a sample, it wasn't in the best condition. Some of the beading was coming off and it would need a lot of altering. The bust was too big and the length too long. There was some intricate beading from about half way down the skirt to the hem which would make taking the dress up really difficult. And even though it was half the price, it was still quite a lot to pay. I could get a brand new dress from a decent designer, made to fit me perfectly, for less. It was a really hard decision to make, a Vera Wang dress for a reasonable-ish price doesn't come along every day, but in the end I decided to be sensible and didn't buy it.
Having got a taste for Vera Wang, I made an appointment to look at their new season collection. It was a fantastic experience, the dresses were AMAZING. But again, not quite what I was looking for, and at £5,000 for the cheapest one, way out of my budget.

I came across a picture of a Stephanie Allin dress which I quite liked, and found a stockist about 10mins away from me, Fleur Bridal. I went over and found Fleur to be an absolute gem. The dress I'd originally liked didn't turn out to be so nice in real life, but Fleur was an expert in choosing dresses that would suit me. She is a truly lovely lady and I enjoyed shopping with her a lot. I ended up really liking another dress, and went back several times to try it on. It was Stephanie Allin's Gina dress, pictured below (that's not me in it obviously haha!).
It was a beautiful dress and was quite flattering on me, but I wasn't 100% sold on it (about 89%). I wasn't so keen on the sweetheart neckline, and there was no beading or crystal work on it, plus I'm not a big bow person.

I tried on this dress by Essense at another store which my friends quite liked, but I wasn't so sure. The colour wasn't right, and again it had the sweetheart neckline.