What is good value?
Cost is never the ultimate issue with wedding dresses, finding the right dress or outfit is generally a bride’s main priority and there are plenty of styles in all price ranges, from luxurious handmade couture wedding dresses in silks, satins and lace to beautifully manufactured high street dresses, to suit every budget and every style criteria.
But there is a difference between cheap and expensive in terms of value. A couture wedding dress may be expensive but it may represent excellent value for money: the fabrics are exquisite silks, satins or lace, the dress is made to measure, the work is carried out by experienced seamstresses in the UK. Conversely a wedding dress may be inexpensive but the fabric may not be particularly appealing, the workmanship may not be accurate and exact, and it may have been made in a factory in China producing hundreds of dresses a day.
I would not advocate bankrupting yourself in planning for your wedding, but I am saying that we need to think carefully about what is good value for money and what is not. We have become accustomed to buying cheaper and cheaper on the high street and have to remember the difference between a pair of trousers produced in endless quantities, one pair of which just happens to fit, and a beautiful made to measure dress which is expressly fitted to your shape and style requirements.
Of course value is a quality that we bestow as individuals and represents whether, in our estimation, that dress is worth that amount of money. This works at the higher end of the cost scale as well as at the lower end. That dress may be the most expensive in your short list of potential wedding dresses, but if the buying and making process does not involve personal service, being made to measure, being made in this country for a fair wage, then you need to ask yourself where is the value?
Still, the right dress is the right dress isn’t it?