Plan Your Wedding, on a Budget & Stress Free! Fun,inexpensive ideas,creative crafts for brides. Advice and planning for ceremony and reception.

The Bride
Extra Recommendations
Bridesmaids
The Guys
The Moms
Flower Girls/Ring Bearers

The bride generally is responsible for deciding upon the attire for the wedding. Lets face it. Clothes are fun! We ladies like clothes! Keep in mind that the site and style of both ceremony and reception impacts the choices as does season and time of day. Keep these in mind when selecting the attire. You will have a decent set of guidelines if you've done your homework. You can save quite a bit of money on this aspect of your wedding if you plan and shop carefully.

The Dress: A bridal gown can cost thousands of dollars. The budget conscious bride would never pay that much for a dress! You can get a wonderful dress for $700 or much less depending on what you want and where you go. Cut out pictures of dresses you like and find less expensive dresses that look similar. Go to bridal outlets, discount bridal stores, resale stores, scan the classifieds, rent one or have one made.
The Veil: Let me be blunt. For heavens sake do NOT buy an expensive veil despite any salesperson's attmept to convince you that you must do so. You can have a veil made at less than half the price of what it would cost at a bridal store. You can also find the components to make your own at your local large craft store. Sometimes at the craft store you can buy a veil, pre-measured and finished. All you have to do is attach it to the headband, comb, barette of your choice. So long as what you create or have made compliments your gown, it matches well enough.
Accessories: No need to spend a lot of money on shoes. If your dress is floor length, no one will really see them much. If your dress is shorter, you can still find nice shoes that don't break the bank. Make sure they're comfortable though. If you are budget savvy you can even have one pair for the ceremony and another more comfortable pair for the reception. Time your lingerie shopping around a sale. Jewelry can be borrowed or something you already have on hand.

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The key to successful selection is to choose clothes that look expensive, even if you don't pay much.
Be sure that if you have pearls or jewels of any kind on your dress that they are sewn on, not glued. Glued pearls will often fall off on a humid day or otherwise, causing a hazard for your guests and embarassment to you.
I highly recommend detachable trains over bustled ones. Bustled trains are very complicated, even in a best-case scenario. Wouldn't it be more fun to greet your guests at the reception rather than having your attendents spend half an hour figuring out how to bustle your train?
Detachable or easy-to-remove veils are a good idea if you plan to be active at your reception.

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You may have the best of intentions in your selection of attire for your attendants but you will probably not be able to please everyone. Most dresses really do look very wedding-ish and will not be worn again. The exception would be if you could find a nice after-five at a department store that fits and looks well on everyone. By the way, finding dresses at a department store can be one of the less expensive options. A discount bridal store is a good place to shop also. You can have dresses made provided the attendants live close enough for fittings. The considerate bride will select a dress that is comfortable, attractive and reasonably priced. (Certainly no more than $150, preferably less than $120)

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This is a good task for your fiance. Give color guidelines and reserve veto power. The people at the formal wear store are usually fairly knowledgeable about what is appropriate for any given occasion. Make sure tuxes are reserved early enough so all the sizes you need are there when you need them. Also you need a little extra time just in case the shop gets your order wrong.

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There are many ways to decide on Mom's attire depending on the bride and the Mothers. Its my opinion that the kindest thing to do is to inform both Mothers of the colors of your wedding and just let them choose whatever style and color they desire, provided the style is appropriate and the color complimentary to your color scheme.

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Its my belief that a flower girl or a ring bearer is an extra, not a necessity. If, for whatever the reason, you want or need to have one or both, it can be expensive to clothe them in miniature versions of wedding party attire. A more economical option is to dress them in a complimentary way that is comfortable for them, since the experience can be overwhelming, particularly for the very young ones.

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