I bought along my mum, sister and grandma for this trip. My grandma was a dress maker for many of the top bridal designers and she knows her stuff. She still works as an on call dress maker even though she's in her 80's! Her knowledge is hardcore, she knows how a well made dress should look and when we were at Simonelli in the morning she got very picky on the samples. But samples are just that - samples. They are not a true representation of the finished product.
Simonelli is in Fairfield right next to the train station, definitely a weird spot for a bridal shop. They have a beautiful range of dresses. After trying on dresses at Brides of Melbourne you can tell the difference in quality. A well made dress just fits better and feels better. I like a dress that holds me in. I really liked the corset feel I got from Mariana Hardwick's dresses, they just suck everything in and hide any of your imperfections so well. Simonelli was similar but not as full on. There were a few stand-out dresses. One in particular which is the white version of Nadia Coppolino's 2011 Brownlow Medal dress:
It's an amazing dress - but not within my budget right now. If I had $8000 lying around then sure I would totally go for that. But I don't and I need to be realistic about this. The reason why it costs so much is the silk and the drapery, it would take hours and hours to hand sew this.
I found a few other dresses, one my grandma and mum liked a lot - but I disagreed. Aubrey, my sister, sat there looking at me very quietly. She really didn't give me a lot of input like I thought she would. And as everyone says, at the end of the day it's my choice. The one dress I did like everyone else found reason to nitpick it because of one tiny thing on it that could be easily changed. Everyone forgets that because it's made-to-measure you can do whatever you want to the design. You can change bling, colors, the train, how much skirt layers you have etc. It's not what you see is what you get.
So in the afternoon my mum and I traveled to Armadale to Baccini & Hill. Great service, not as big as Mariana's but the choice and the price of the dresses was very good. Baccini really caters to a lot of tastes and budgets and I'm sure that's why it's so popular with brides. I tried on several dresses that I had picked out from my research online and we started there. Two dresses stand out for me, both are very different. One is slinky and light and very Grecian and the other is so Dior with a full skirt and is very sweet.
So there's the run down without giving anything away (hopefully). I'm going to take a week off from dress shopping because I've found 4 dresses that are great. But I think I was expecting something to really jump out at me and yell "THIS IS THE ONE". I think I've got some great options and any dress I choose is a winner. But is there such thing as "the one"? The one dress to rule them all? How do I know which dress is "the one"? What if I make a mistake and regret it?
Am I thinking about this too much? YES
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