If you are a bride who is shopping for their wedding dress and are struggling with deciding on which dress to purchase, you will not want to miss this advice post. If you are a bride who is worried about buyer’s remorse when it comes to your wedding dress, you are not alone. Purchasing your wedding gown comes with all the emotions. Besides being a big ticket purchase, you may be feeling a lot of different emotions when it comes time to purchase and order your wedding dress. You may start to second guess yourself or the dress you chose. We have all the tips and advice you need when it comes to wedding dress buyer’s remorse.
We recently discussed staying on trend with your wedding dress and how to handle feeling like your wedding dress is not trendy anymore when wedding day comes around. We are expanding on this idea by giving you some insider tips to help you learn how you can prevent buyer’s remorse and what you can do if you do happen to experience buyer’s remorse after you purchase your bridal gown.
VIDEO: How to Avoid & Handle Wedding Dress Buyer's Remorse
If you are shopping for your wedding dress and worried about how to handle buyer's remorse, or perhaps you have already found your dream wedding dress and want to avoid or get rid of your buyer's remorse, don't miss our video with all the tips on how to avoid and handle wedding dress buyer's remorse.
Second Guessing
Purchasing a wedding dress is such a unique experience. It is not like buying your everyday clothes or even a special event outfit from a department store. A wedding dress is a made to order item and is something that you won’t see for months and months after trying on a sample dress and making your purchase. The exception here is if you purchase a wedding dress at a sample sale and are able to take your dress home with you that day. For the majority of brides, you are trying on a dress in store and ordering your gown based on that sample dress. It may then be six to eight months before you see your dress again. It’s only natural that you might start to second guess yourself and wonder if you made the right decision.
You won’t have your wedding dress easily accessible to go look at to calm your nerves or remind you what it truly looks like in person. It’s normal to also question yourself after making a big purchase, so know that you are not alone in those feelings if you do experience them.
The Top Two
Our best piece of advice when it comes to avoiding buyer’s remorse is important to keep in mind when you have narrowed down to your top two wedding dresses. If you are down to you favorite two dresses, you want to be sure you choose the best one for you so you won’t be thinking about the other dress you also liked. The key in this situation is to go back and forth between these two dresses until you can make a sound decision. If you need to change into these dresses five times, do it.
Try on these last two dresses as many times as you need to in order to make the right decision. After seeing the dresses back to back, you will know which one is the right choice to wear on wedding day. Take photos of you in each dress and look at the photos while you are still in the dress. You don’t want to go home and just rely on the photos you have to make a decision. Make your decision in the moment so you have all the information. You want to make the final choice when you are in the dress so you can see the full look as well as how the dress looks in photos, and more importantly, how the dress makes you feel while you are wearing it.
How You Feel
The best way to ensure you avoid buyer’s remorse when it comes to your wedding dress is to choose the dress based on how you feel. Of course how you look in a certain dress is going to play a factor. Every bride wants to look beautiful on wedding day. But a dress that makes you feel confident and feel beautiful is only going to add to your glowing happiness.
You want to buy the dress that you genuinely love and feel absolutely beautiful in. Going home to “sleep on it” is not the solution you want to try. You don’t want to get stuck overanalyzing photos of you in the dress. Make the decision while you are in the dress and feel that it’s the right choice.
Price Factors
At Lovella, one of the main considerations we hear from brides who are shopping for their wedding dress is price point. If you are between two wedding dresses, we would encourage you to not make your final decision based only on the price. We certainly understand having a budget for your wedding dress, but don’t let saving money sway your decision.
Don’t compromise on your wedding dress just to save a little money. Yes, you can still be logical and responsible with your finances, but choosing a wedding dress based on cost alone could end up costing more in the long run. We’ve seen brides who are between two dresses choose the cheaper dress, but the other dress stays in the back of their mind. That dress they love more but decided not to get so they could spend less sticks with them. This can lead to regret on wedding day because they walk down the aisle in a dress they don’t love. Or they end up buying another dress at a later date and have now spent twice as much to get the dress they really love.
Outside Opinions
We know that buying your wedding dress is a very exciting part of wedding planning. Brides are often excited to share photos of their dress with family and friends. We would encourage you to think about who you are sharing photos with. Many people will want to share their opinion with you and that can become overwhelming. Too much feedback from loved ones can cloud your judgment and cause you to second guess your decisions. This is especially true for the loved ones who were not with you at your dress shopping appointments. They didn’t get to see all of the dresses you tried on prior to your final dress. They weren’t on the full journey with you as you figured out what styles did and didn’t work for you. Each dress you try on leads to the next dress and informs your final wedding dress.
To save you from people oversharing their opinions on your bridal look, you can follow what we call the bride’s secret. Just say that you are not sharing your wedding dress with anyone. It’s going to be a secret for your fiancé and all of your wedding guests. This can help you prevent buyers remorse because you are allowing yourself to think clearly and really make the decision based on style and feel and confidence within you versus any other external factors.
New Bridal Designs
Another very common dilemma we hear from our brides after purchasing their wedding dress is they are still looking at new styles. They go home with just photos of their dress and start to over analyze them. They start seeing new bridal collections coming out and start wondering if they made the right choice.
Rest assured, all of the new designs you are seeing come out would not be available in time for your wedding. They would not have been options for you to try on, so don’t feel like you are missing out on something.
Try It On Again
If you find that you are experiencing buyers remorse after ordering your wedding dress, take a deep breath. See if you can make an appointment to go back to your bridal store and try on the dress again. Don’t over analyze the photos you have because that can send you into a spiral. You need to try to get back into the store and put the dress on. The feeling of you in the dress is going to be so much better than just your photos.
Being in the dress again is going to remind yourself of why you chose that dress in the first place. And remember that you are only trying on a sample wedding dress. Your dress that you order is going to be to your body measurements and the correct size so it will fit better when you get to your first fitting appointment. Alterations will then make sure your dress fits like a glove before wedding day.
If you do go back to the store to try on your dress again, express how you are feeling to your bridal stylist. There may be ways they can ease your mind. Perhaps you are regretting getting a fitted dress rather than a ball gown. An easy fix is to add an overskirt to your dress to give you that ball gown silhouette. Know that there are fixes that can be done so trust your bridal stylist’s expertise.
More Helpful Wedding Dress Shopping Advice
We hope you have found this advice helpful when it comes to shopping for your wedding dress and how to avoid buyer's remorse with your bridal dress. For even more helpful advice when it comes to shopping for your dream wedding dress and finding your bridal style, be sure to check out our past posts:
- Keeping Up With Wedding Dress Trends After Saying Yes to The Dress
- How Do You Know When You've Found the Right Wedding Dress?
- Top 3 Most Common Wedding Attire Mistakes
About Lovella
If you're shopping for your perfect wedding dress, come visit us at Lovella Bridal in Glendale, CA. We carry wedding dresses in all sizes and styles, including plus-size bridal gowns and a full selection of veils and accessories. Lovella Bridal is the premier, luxury bridal wedding dress shopping boutique located in Los Angeles, California. Lovella features couture, feminine, modern and chic bridal gowns in all sizes from the best wedding dress designers. Schedule an appointment to find the wedding dress of your dreams at Lovella Bridal. We can't wait to help you!
About Wedding Fashion Expert
Our wedding dress shopping tips and advice are from Nayri, Lovella's own, in-house wedding fashion expert. Nayri is truly the expert when it comes to bridal fashion and wedding style. As the Wedding Fashion Expert, Nayri is the top bridal fashion stylist and the best-selling author of the book "I'm Getting Married And I Have Nothing To Wear," the ultimate guide to helping brides find their wedding day style and their perfect wedding dress. You can subscribe to her YouTube channel or listen to her podcast for more helpful and practical advice on wedding dress shopping.
