A plea to bridal salons

Can we all set up a meeting or something? Is Tuesday good for you? I am going bananas with the bridal salons that have beautiful websites and links to all the designers that they carry. A bride (me) will then click on these links and see fantastic and beautiful dresses that just scream "try me on". Granted some of them scream that louder than others, and others scream "is that a veil on your head or a bird's nest?"

The point is the bride (me) falls in love with a dress and then calls the salon to book an appointment. She dutifully prints out colored photos of all the dresses from that particular designer she likes and takes them to her appointment. She gets to the store only to discover that the store either doesn't carry that designer anymore, or they don't have that particular dress. Even though the website said they did and even had pictures of the dress on their website banner.

And so the bride (again, still me) tries on a few dresses because hell, she's there anyway. Oh and by "try on" we mean "either hold it up to yourself to get a general idea, or twist, shimmy and pull until your hair is a wreck and you're sweaty and the dress doesn't zip up in the back but you sort of get the idea of what you look like as a bride.

Meanwhile all we wanted was to see the dress we saw on the website.

I am convinced that either the beautiful dresses you see in the magazines or online actually don't exist OR bridal salon owners are not web designers. The thing is many folks plan entire trips and days off to go to a particular store that supposedly carries that designer, only to show up and not to have any dress you actually had in mind. This could be frustrating to the person who say, only has limited time and very exacting tastes. Gee, sound like anyone you know?

I have learned from this part of my wedding journey to ask the salon if they carry a particular designer before I book an appointment. And if I know of a particular dress I want, I ask about that too. And if they don't have it but will borrow it, I sure as hell ask about any shipping or borrowing fees...ONLY THEN do I decide if it's worth going in. Oh, and if they do have it or can get it for me I make sure to find out if it's a bridal size 2 and in seafoam green before I go. I know I learned my lesson on that one.

I will write a separate plea to wedding designers in a later post. Right now I'm too busy trolling the web looking for dresses that do exist.