1,921 Pieces of Wedding Dress Advice From Brides, by Subject

Every subject

Subject	Lines	From brides with no regret	From brides with regrets	Median paid
Pay the tailor, not the label	237	148	89	$700
Hunt the same dress secondhand	139	105	34	$400
Set the number first, then stay inside it	129	96	33	$1,150
Ask for samples, ex-display and clearance	119	90	29	$800
Decide once, then stop looking	96	52	44	$1,500
Judge the fabric, not the ticket	92	67	25	$882
Choose what you can wear all day	76	55	21	$999
Order it made to your measurements	70	57	13	$600
Change the one detail that bothers you	69	40	29	$450
Buy it for yourself and nobody else	58	32	26	$1,400
Shop outside the bridal aisle	43	33	10	$375
Run the appointment on your terms	37	28	9	$1,300
Decide honestly whether you want a second dress	35	19	16	$650
Take the time and go back once more	34	20	14	$1,300
Buy the one you love, not the sensible one	28	18	10	$800
Know the exit before you sign	19	10	9	$350
Match the gown to the day you are having	19	11	8	$1,250
Everything else they told the next bride	621	396	225	$700

How to read it

Two columns are worth comparing before you open anything. A subject where the advice comes mostly from brides with no regret is a description of what worked. A subject where the split is closer to even is usually a warning, because brides who ran into a problem are the ones who write about it.

The median column changes what a line means. Advice to hunt the same dress secondhand comes from brides who paid a median well below the site median; advice to buy the one you love comes from brides who paid well above it. Neither is wrong, and both are answering a different question.

Questions about the advice

What is the most common advice brides give?

By subject, it is about the tailor. 237 of the 1,921 lines here are about paying properly for the fit rather than for the label, and it comes from brides at every price level. The second largest group is about hunting the same dress secondhand.

Does the advice differ between happy and unhappy brides?

On subject, less than you would expect: both groups talk about the same things. On content, considerably. Brides with no regret describe what worked, and brides with regret describe the specific thing that went wrong, which is why each page shows the two separately rather than blending them.

Why is a price attached to some lines?

Because advice reads differently depending on what the person giving it spent. A line about paying for quality from a bride who spent $6,000 is a different claim from the same line at $300. The figure is shown wherever she said what she paid.

Is it normal to regret your wedding dress right after buying it?

Several brides report the same thing unprompted: one felt it within a couple of days of ordering and went back to the boutique, one still regrets her choice five years later, and regulars say regret posts appear multiple times a day in this sub. It is very common here: several said they panicked after ordering and then fell back in love with the gown, while two rebought, including one who replaced a $2,700 dress with a $400 one.

how do i stop second-guessing my wedding dress

Stop browsing other gowns online, and go back to the shop to try yours on again. Repeat browsing is named as the thing feeding the doubt. Stop looking at inspiration. The brides traced her doubt to California elopement content that skews very casual, and brides told her to get off social media and ask instead whether the dress makes her feel beautiful.

Should I try on wedding dresses above my budget?

Repeatedly called the cardinal rule of dress shopping: do not. The brides only put this one on to look at the back and ended up in tears in the mirror, which some brides read as the shop steering her toward a bigger sale. No. Brides repeatedly warn that stylists pull above-budget gowns and you fall for them; state a hard limit up front. One bride who gave a 1,200 budget was shown only gowns under it and paid 950.

does wedding dress regret go away

For the brides answering here it did. One had major regret a week out and now loves her photos; another wound up with something quite different from her vision and reports zero regret. the bride who asked later confirmed she was happy at pickup. For this bride it did completely. She wrote in a panic months before the wedding, wore the same dress, and came back afterwards saying she felt like a princess in it and was glad she had been talked off the ledge.

can you negotiate the price of a wedding dress at a bridal shop

brides say to ask the shop to meet you halfway or to sell it at your stated budget, and to ring other shops that carry the same gown to compare. The worst outcome is a no. Some brides did: one always asks for 10% off by citing another shop, one haggled a consignment gown to 500, and a shop honored a written misquote so a 10,000-plus gown sold for 6,000; a discontinued floor sample went for 50% off.

should I buy a second wedding dress if I regret the first

Everyone here who did says it was worth it, and the one bride who stuck with her regret dress still feels bummed looking at her photos. The caveat brides add is to pay for it outside the wedding fund rather than eating into other vendors. This bride did: she bought a $300 replacement, compared the two side by side and went with the new one for her barn wedding.

Do brides regret spending a lot on a wedding dress?

The 6,000 bride is torn (worth it on the day, second thoughts when the credit card bills came), the 4,500 bride thinks she could have found cheaper, while those at 1,200-2,500 and the 20-600 bargain hunters report no regret at all. One bride who paid 2,500 before extensive alterations loves the gown but calls the price excessive in hindsight; a relative who paid 1,500 for a niece's gown and a 2005 bride at 650 said it was worth it.

how much do you save at a bridal sample sale

the bride who asked paid 600 for the gown she chose, which was a third of the budget she had set for a dress. Samples went for 2,500 (10k silk gown), 750 (6,400 Romona Keveza), 3,300 (Leanne Marshall runway piece), 4,000 (8,500 retail), 3,671 (Liz Martinez at 60-70 percent off), 1,152, 1,850 (Pronovias) and 200 and 45 at NYC's Bride on a Buck; the trade-off is repairs, cleaning or resizing, which cost 400-1,700 in those cases.