The Bride Wore Red

Melissa Gilbert wears striking red wedding dress to wed old friend Timothy Busfield. Congratulations and best wishes for much happiness. It's not as odd as you think. The convention of white wedding dresses is a fairly recent innovation set by Queen Victoria of England. Before that, brides wore gowns of the most sumptuous fabrics available. Their dresses were often alight with precious jewels. The longer the train, the better to show off their family's wealth! What about you? Red, white or cut-off blue jeans?

New Arrivals in Curvy Sizes

Buying a sample wedding dress has advantages and disadvantages. Bargain-smart brides can save hundreds - even thousands of dollars on bridal dresses styled by among the world's most popular designers. That the plus. The minus? The size range is limited and most often the styles run considerably smaller than your career wear.

That's why new arrivals in Scarlett's Closet are such a welcome surprise. They are beautiful, bejeweled designer wedding dresses in sizes that fit the curvy bride - 10, 12, 14 and 16.

Have a look at New Arrivals in Curvy Sizes

2013 New Year's Clearance Sale

It's ba-ack! Our fabulous annual New Year's clearance sale. Famous brands just $2013, $200.13 and $20.13. Hot styles. Hot prices. This is the one you've been waiting for!

Go to Scarlett's Closet

The End of the Strapless Wedding Dress

Jezebel takes down the bridal industry for designing for dollars rather than styling flattering fashions. Is this the end of the strapless wedding dress?

So, let me get this straight: designers already charge a metric fuckton for wedding dresses, way more than they charge for regular, non-wedding dresses that happen to come in white, and they're cutting corners by making them in the style that's the least challenging for them to fit to brides? And that style just happens to be almost universally unflattering? Oh, hell no. This ends here, strapless gowns.

Designers, are you listening? 

Pronovias La Sposa New Arrivals

Drama. Elegance. Romance. Sex appeal. Super savings. ooo la la. New arrivals by Pronovias La Sposa have it all.

Go there

Amelia by Augusat Jones

Augusta Jones Amelia ivory silk organza mermaid wedding dress kissed by Chantilly lace makes a dramatic image as you take your vows. Retail price $2400 Sale Price $1600

Go there

Why Does My Wedding Dress Cost So Much?

I was both amused and appalled at a video hosted by NPR online today - Why Did My Wedding Dress Cost So Much? 

It was produced by Caitlin Kenny who recently purchased a wedding dress for a beach wedding.After the fact, she decided that her purchase was a rip off - the cost of $700 to make her wedding dress was much less than she actually paid, $2700.

It's a cute video and an interesting story, but it is inaccurate and highly misleading.

First, her cost basis only includes fabric and sewing; it omits all other manufacturing expenses including design, marketing, advertising, transportation, overhead, taxes and other costs of doing business in a global marketplace.

It also omits the business expenses of the salon who served her when she was shopping.

The salon purchases its samples from the manufacturer. They provide trained consultants to help a bride find and fit a flattering style, order it from the manufacturer and assure that the bride to be receives her dress on budget and on time.
 
Add in all these activities, people and a reasonable profit, the cost versus price is not out of line.

Next, Ms. Kenny misunderstands fabric. She's shocked that she paid such a high price for polyester, a synthetic. It's a common reaction.

Here's the deal.

Look at every piece of apparel in your closet. Unless a fabric is woven of a natural fiber such as silk, wool, cotton or hemp, it's made of a synthetic thread. Satin, lace, dupioni, georgette, chiffon and the like - these are the names of a specific weave. And they're all woven in China, India or another Third World country by women and children who are treated abysmally and live on less than $2 a day.

Same with bridal.

All bridal and formal dresses are made in synthetic fabric. There are many grades of polyester from cheesy to sublime. You get what you pay for.

Lastly, all better bridal dresses are made to order.

Your bridal gown is not hanging on the rack in your size like a dress you purchase at Nordstrom. You choose your dress by trying on salon samples, which are purchased by the salon for this purpose.  The salon places the order with the manufacturer. Every dress arrives at the salon - new, pristine, never worn or tried on, as close to perfection as any manufacturer can make it.

A mid-tier manufacturer such as Enzoani makes dresses with machines to control costs. It's an assembly line production just like the car companies. To meet demand which they estimate from past season's sales, they may make a run of  gowns in many sizes per style to distribute through licensed bridal salons. It's shipped to the manufacturer's warehouses in the USA or other countries in the interest of time. This means you can get your dress in 3 months instead of 6. This is "hanging stock." But it's still a new, never worn or tried on dress, as close to perfection as any manufacturer can make it.

At the end of a season, these manufacturers still have a lot of stock hanging around.  Online bridal boutiques buy the hanging stock at a discount and pass the savings to brides online. Alternatively, when a pattern is discontinued, these dresses are sold to online bridal boutiques or sent to landfill.

Ms. Kenny's cost basis also omitted overstocks and waste.

High-end designers such as Reem Acra, Claire Pettibone or Vera Wang make their dresses in natural fabrics and better-quality synthetics, such as duchess satin which is a weave that uses both silk and synthetic fiber. They also rely on old-fashioned craftsmanship. Each seam, pleat, hem, bow, bead and flower accent is made by hand. It's painstaking work by highly skilled labor. It's costly to undertake. And it's expensive to the ultimate buyer.

When a pattern is retired, these designer have only samples and runway dresses hanging in their warehouse. Anything marketable is sold into the after-market. Everything else is landfill.

So that's the bridal industry. It's not the Evil Empire. And it's not why your dress costs so much.

At the end of the day, the value of your wedding dress is not about the cost of design, materials, fabrication, transportation, distribution, sales, marketing, merchandising or brand name, but what it's worth to you.

Many women are content with a Chinese knock off made from a pattern stolen from a high- end designer. The fabric is cheesy. It may or may not fit well. But it's a pretty dress for a one-day occasion.

Other women will not be satisfied with anything less than "the best" - they want the label and all the sucking up that goes with it. The "exorbitant" price makes wearing it all the more satisfying.

Most women are somewhere in between.

But regardless of our social status and the budget we can afford to invest, we want to be the star in our wedding story. And from the earliest times when weddings were celebrated specifically to show off our status and wealth, scullery maid to celebrity, every one of us wants to feel like a queen and look like a million bucks when we celebrate our marriage with a wedding.

Fairytale princess. Cinderella. Diva. Or Bottom-Dollar Bargain Hunter. The value of a wedding dress is not on its price tag, but in the fulfillment of our dream.

Whether your wedding dress is a cherished keepsake or a rip off is all a matter of perception.