Wedding Dress Shopping In The Pandemic

Like everything else during the last year and a half, pandemic wedding dress shopping, has come with its fair share of problems. I waited until after restrictions had officially lifted in England to book my appointments in South West bridal boutiques. Maybe going in naively, I thought restrictions in the stores would have been lifted to by then but, I was wrong. 

I wanted to share my lessons learned with you to help The Wedding Place brides find their pandemic dress shopping experience a little less of a surprise. Here are a few things I think you should be aware of…

Wear A Mask

You will usually still have to wear a mask, same goes for your entourage too. I’m still wearing my mask in day-to-day shopping so although I was happy to comply with this restriction, seeing yourself in a wedding dress for the first time with a mask on, doesn’t have quite the same effect. It’s also hard to gauge your family’s reaction when they’re wearing masks too. Walking out to just eyes and all facial expressions covered up, isn’t the easiest way to find out if they like, hate or LOVE the dress.

Limited Entourage

While we’re on the topic of your entourage, there will more than likely still be a limit on how many people you can take. This was devastating to me, as I had waited until England restrictions had lifted to book appointments anyway, so to find out I then still couldn’t bring the four family members I wanted with me, was upsetting. As a little girl, you dream of these moments for your whole life, then have it ruined by not having everyone you want there. It took a little while to come to terms with this and after a couple of bridezilla meltdowns over this, I then had to break the news to my mum, mother-in-law, sister and sister-in-law. I wanted them all there for different reasons, their opinions matter a lot to me, and we wanted to all be apart of this journey together. We had all had these dates in the diary for months so then to tell one of them they couldn’t come was awful. Of course, they were understanding but they were also gutted by this restriction. I then tried to make it as fair as possible by asking them to switch out who couldn’t come to the next appointment. You probably have already guessed, that the added stress of letting others down on top of trying to find a dress, didn’t bode well for me. So, my tip to you is bear this in mind, when you ask your best girls to come with you as it’s more than likely you will have to let some of them down. 

Pandemic wedding dress shopping has been a very different experience to what I had dreamed, but I guess that’s the same as everything in life post-pandemic now. We have to adjust to our ‘new normal’, change our outlook on the restrictions, and get on with it.

If you have learned any lessons from your pandemic wedding dress shopping experience that you want to share or even have any questions about your upcoming appointments, put them below in the comments and our community can help each other.

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