It’s all in the timing…

The beautiful world of bridal… Fast fashion it ain’t!

Over the years, getting more and more accustomed to next day, even same day delivery (if you’re lucky enough to not live deep in the depths of Norfolk!) I am finding more and more Bride’s shocked at the time frame needed in order to have yourself a gorgeous new wedding dress to walk down the aisle in.

Like I said, The world of Bridal is probably one of the most sustainable branches of the fashion world tree.

When you come into the boutique, the dresses hanging on my rails are my samples (the boutique is just my very large and expensive wardrobe really!) and these are what you try on in the search to find THE ONE, and then when you inevitably do, I take your measurements, compare these to your chosen designer and then order you YOUR dress in YOUR size, the size closest to your measurements.

Your dress is then made for you!

There’s no waste, no factory with hundreds and hundreds of dresses, each one waiting in the hope that they will get picked. The dress is made to order for you.

Exception to the rule is that you buy off the rack in which you are then purchasing from me, the sample that was made for me and the boutique, so again no waste.

Anyway I digress, so in the assumption that you are ordering your dress new and having it made for you, this is going to take some time. Like I said, there isn’t a big old factory just waiting to package up your dress and send her on her way.

Generally for the gowns ordered from the designers that I stock in the boutique, on average the delivery times are around 16-20 weeks, sometimes it could be 12 weeks and sometimes it could be 24; although being completely honest, for me it’s generally between the 12 and 18 week mark.

Now this is the time frame from placing the order to getting the dress delivered into the boutique, this DOES NOT include the time needed for alterations and making sure the fit of your dress is *chefs kiss* ready for you to walk down the aisle.

Again this is specific to me and how The Bottom Drawer Bridal runs things and may be different for other boutiques, while I don’t have an in-house seamstress, I have a wonderful lady called Emma that I can recommend for you all, while you don’t have to use her, she has been looking after Brides at The Bottom Drawer Bridal now for over 3 years and has done a wonderful job of it.

For Emma, I would always recommend that you have that first fitting around 8-10 weeks before the wedding, you generally have 3 fittings each one roughly 2/3 weeks apart, therefore having the dress ready to collect (and steam if needed) the week before the wedding.

So lets say you order your dress in that first week of January and she takes 24 weeks to arrive into the boutique, and if we then need the full 10 weeks for alterations, we would be looking at you being aisle ready for around the 1st week of September, so start to finish around 9 months… but imagine you needed a few weeks, maybe a couple of months even to get all your appointments in and actually find the one, so when we say you should be looking for your wedding dress around 12 months before your wedding day, this isn’t a sales technique to scare you into buying your dress, its to ensure that *touch wood*should there be any delays in production or even shipping there is still plenty of time to get your wedding dress to the boutique safe and sound, ready to walk down the aisle.

So again trust me when I say, the fear in *our eyes when you say you have 6-9 months until your wedding day or even less, that fear is genuine, we don’t ever want you to feel pressured into buying your wedding dress but at the same time, we don’t want you worrying about your wedding dress arriving on time just as much as we don’t want to spend the next few months worrying about it ourselves!

Now if you have any questions relating to your wedding dress time scale then please do not hesitate to get in touch!

All my love

Victoria x

*when I say we, I am referring to all the other gorgeous boutique owners I know and love who only want the best for you and your wedding day!