Unless you're Britney Spears, this probably isn't your idea of the perfect bridesmaids dress...
As a regular bridesmaid extraordinaire, I’ve done my fair share of bridesmaid dress wearing. Honestly, they’re not all bad. I’ve met very few brides in my life who have ever said to themselves, “I really want to choose the most hideously ugly bridesmaid dress in the world so no one will ever want to wear it again. Oh, and when I’m choosing the ugliest dress possible, I’m going to also factor in price to ensure not only do my bridesmaids have to wear hideous dresses… they also have to pay half a month’s salary for them.”
With that said, the truth about bridesmaids dresses is that even the most beautiful ones the bride can choose rarely end up being a staple of a night out on the town. There’s a good reason for this problem when you actually take a moment to think about it. Most bridesmaids dresses simply don’t fit other regular occasions. It’s not that they’re ugly, it’s just that these days when I go for a night out on the town, I almost never wear a dress. At most I’ll wear a skirt. But more likely, I’ll slide into some tight jeans, a well-fitting top, and a comfortable-yet-sexy pair of heels. That’s what a lot of girls wear to clubs these days… not beautiful satin dresses. The result is a lack of wedding savings for the people in the wedding party. And even though every last one of them is going to buy whatever dress you tell them to, know that if they’re not happy with their dresses, they’re going to grumble about you behind your back. To be fair, if they love their dresses, they’ll find something else to grumble about (”this wedding was too far,” “the DJ didn’t play enough Top 40,” “the groom’s 50-year-old uncle got drunk and kept hitting on all the bridesmaids,” etc.), but at least they’ll have to be a bit more creative in determining their criticisms.
So what’s a bride to do when choosing her bridesmaids dresses? My advice is to choose a color, and then let the bridesmaids choose the dress (with your help, of course). Long gone are the days of each bridesmaid wearing identical dresses (or at least those days should be long gone!). Instead, choose a color, and then take your bridesmaids with you shopping for their dresses. What you’ll end up with are dresses that match your color scheme, and dresses bridesmaid will actually like and want to wear again. Why is this? It’s simple… one of the biggest problems with bridesmaids dresses is they’re the same shapes, but bridesmaids don’t come in the same shapes. They’re all different sorts of shapes and sizes, and if you want to properly outfit them, you need to find dresses that fit their body types. By selecting a color pallet but letting them choose the dress, the bridesmaid will find a dress she likes and will want to wear again (even out to a club), while still looking beautiful at your wedding.
Don’t believe me? Take this example. I was one of four bridesmaids for a wedding back in August. The color of the dresses was lime green. Who wants a lime green dress? No one I’ve ever met, but that’s what my cousin wanted, so that’s what we got. But instead of all four of us getting squeezed into the same exact dress, we got to choose the style. That was great, because we were four very different girls. I’m tall and average-sized, but one of the girls was squat and large, another was super-skinny, and the third girl was so tall I looked like a dwarf next to her. Obviously, no one dress (especially a lime green dress) would fit us all. So instead, we went shopping together one afternoon. And guess what happened. Three of us managed to find dresses we actually liked and flattered our bodies for under $100. But one of the bridesmaids couldn’t find a dress she really liked in that price range. However, there was one dress that looked absolutely awesome on her, but it was $250. In most cases, it would be absolutely ridiculous for one bridesmaid to spend $250 while all the others only spent $100, but she liked the dress so much (lime green though it was), she decided to buy it anyway knowing she’d want to wear it again. Could that have happened with a one-style-(doesn’t)-fit-all type of bridesmaid dress? Absolutely not. But it worked out for the bride in this case because the bridesmaids got to choose their own dresses.
Any you know what… I’ve seen the girl who bought the $250 dress wearing it around town since the wedding. And you know what else? She looks really hot in it!
