The first on my budgeting mission were Bridesmaid dresses. Like an absolute fruit loop I decided to have 5 bridesmaids! Which meant that all costs had to be times by 5. When I first started my wedding planning way back in October 2013 I went to a few Wedding exhibitions for inspiration. I wasn't yet in a position to be buying as it was too early in the planning stages for that, but Wedding fairs are great for getting ideas on how you would like your wedding to look. This was where I fell in L O V E with Two Birds Bridesmaid dresses.
The concept of the Two Birds Bridesmaid dresses is that there is 8 metres of fabric in the skirts with an elasticated waist which means that one size fits all. All you have to chose is the length and colour. The top section of the dress is quite simply 2 strips of material which (as you can see below) can be tied in a variety of different ways depending on the taste of the person wearing it.
This design means that they can wear the dress however they feel comfortable, plus the 'one size fits all' design means that it cuts down on costly and time consuming fittings that, if like mine your bridesmaids live all over the country, can be a complete nightmare to organise. This dress was the answer to all my prayers. Until of course I asked the dreaded question........"how much?". These beautiful dresses retail at 250GBP. Which if you only had 1 or 2 bridesmaids, or if money isn't a factor, then that price would be reasonable. However with 5 bridesmaids and, what I would say to be an average budget, it was totally out of my price range.
This is where 'shopping around' comes in. Where designers come up with something incredible like this, you can almost guarantee that there is someone out there doing the same thing for less money. One tip I can give is Etsy - it hasn't let me down yet and the majority of the items for sale are handmade which in my eyes turns out to be much better quality than mass produced items. So this is where I started my search. I found quite a few sellers with similar dresses, but I was very cautious that while I was looking for a 'cheaper' item I did not want to compromise on quality. I wanted my bridesmaids to both look and feel beautiful on my big day as much as I want to look and feel beautiful. After a lot of searching I decided on an Etsy shop called TheDaintYard.
TheDaintYard sell what look like identical dresses to the Two Bird dresses I had fallen in love with. They are priced at £22.73 for the mid length dresses and £32.09 for a Maxi. The dresses ship from Singapore so shipping costs are quite steep but the dresses still come out at under £50!
Like with the Two Birds dresses these dresses come in a large variety of colours so there is pretty much something for everyone.
I first off messaged the shop and asked if I could be sent come fabric samples. I did this for one of two reasons. First off I wanted to feel the quality of the fabric and also to get a better view of the colours as often colour pay off is different on a screen than in real life. I received the samples a few weeks later and was pleasantly surprised with the cute little package and hand written note that said 'especially for you'. This personal touch was one of the things that made me feel comfortable about the seller. I was at this point happy to go a head and order. But, and I would again advise doing this when shopping around, I wanted to make sure I was happy before I ordered 5 so I started off by just ordering 1. This way if the dress turned out to be not as expected it was no big loss of money. I chose the colour I wanted (blush), made my order and then waited. 2 weeks later the dress arrived and I couldn't wait to open it. And oh I wasn't disappointed at all. The quality of the material felt identical to the Two Bird dresses I had seen at the Wedding Fair, and the colour was just as I had hoped. Each dress comes with a small 'boob tube' in the same colour and material as the dress so that your bridesmaids have a bit more coverage if wanted.
Here are some snippets of me wearing the dress so that you get a better idea of how they look. (Excuse the quality of the pictures, these were originally for my own personal use before I decided to write this post).
So there you have it, spending time researching and 'shopping around', on this occasion has really paid off. I am super happy with the dresses and would highly recommend them to anyone.
There will no doubt be more 'shopping around' posts in this Wedding Series to hopefully give you some more inspiration. Let me know if you have any budgeting experiences that may assist me with my planning journey :)
See you again soon
