A Wedding Dress Shopping Guide for Auckland Brides
If you need a wedding dress in Auckland, it can be tempting to begin with the dress itself. In my experience, that is not always the best place to start.
Some brides come to see me very early in the planning process, before the venue or even the wedding date has been properly settled. Your wedding dress is part of a much bigger picture, so it helps to get some of that picture into place first.
Here is how I would approach it.
1. Set the scene
Start by choosing your preferred wedding date and deciding where you would like to get married. That may be in Auckland, elsewhere in New Zealand, or overseas.
View your preferred wedding venues, check their availability and, once you are happy, lock in the wedding date.
The venue, season, location and scale of your wedding all begin to create the setting your dress will eventually become part of. You do not need to know exactly what you want to wear yet. You are simply giving yourself a useful framework.
2. Book your wedding photographer
Auckland and wider New Zealand have some excellent wedding photographers, and the good ones can book a long way in advance.
Unlike some wedding suppliers, a photographer can generally photograph only one wedding on any particular day. Once you know your date, it is worth choosing and booking your photographer reasonably early.
With those big pieces in place, you are in a much better position to start thinking seriously about your wedding dress.
3. Start looking at wedding dresses locally
There are several excellent bridal boutiques and wedding dress designers in Auckland, and as a general rule I recommend looking locally before buying a wedding dress online.
Online photographs can be wonderfully inspiring, but it is difficult to judge the weight of a fabric, the structure of a bodice or the quality of a dress from an image alone. Fit is another consideration. Alterations can become a substantial additional cost, and some dresses are much easier to adjust than others.
Looking locally allows you to see and feel the wedding dresses yourself, try different proportions and have someone available to help you with fit.
Auckland also offers a broad range of bridal styles. Many of the looks you discover online can be found, adapted or created here, with the advantage of being able to work with someone locally throughout the process.
4. Before you look at bridal trends, look in your own wardrobe
Now that your wedding plans are taking shape, start thinking about the dress itself.
Some women seem able to wear almost anything and look fabulous. Most of us have certain shapes, fabrics and styles that consistently make us feel our best.
So begin with your own wardrobe.
Think about the favourite dress you always reach for, or the top you know looks particularly good on you. Do you naturally gravitate towards simple looks in beautiful plain fabrics, or are you drawn to texture and pattern? Do you love romantic, whimsical clothing, or does minimalist elegance feel more like you?
Think about shape too. Does a V-neckline suit you? Do you love wearing something fitted? Are you happiest in clothes with movement and softness?
At this stage you are not trying to design your wedding dress. You are simply gathering clues about your own personal style.
5. Think about the scale of your wedding
I believe most Auckland wedding venues can carry most wedding dress styles.
If you love a heavily detailed, dramatic, full-skirted wedding dress and you are having a small wedding, then be fabulous and wear it. There do not need to be strict rules.
The scale of the celebration can, however, give you useful clues about proportion.
Larger guest numbers and bigger spaces can carry larger or more dramatic wedding dresses beautifully. In our Auckland bridal boutique, some of the fuller dresses can almost feel oversized when you first see them in the room. Put the same dress into a large wedding venue among a hundred guests and suddenly the proportions make complete sense.
Scale changes how a dress feels.
6. Use Pinterest for ideas, not for finding “the one”
Pinterest is every wedding creative’s joy and pain.
It can be wonderfully inspiring, and it can very quickly become overwhelming. It is also worth remembering that many bridal images show one perfect photograph, taken from one perfect angle, out of perhaps a hundred photographs of the dress.
Use Pinterest as a place to browse and gather ideas.
Notice what repeatedly catches your eye. Is it a soft, flowing skirt? An architectural silhouette? A particular neckline? Movement in the fabric? The sensuousness of a low back?
Try to work out what it was in the photograph that made you stop.
You are stretching out your feelers and identifying the building blocks of looks you may want to explore later. You do not need to find one exact wedding dress and somehow reproduce it.
7. Now the exciting bit starts: wedding dress shopping
Once you have looked at your own wardrobe and had a browse through Pinterest, the exciting part starts.
You can finally try on wedding dresses.
Bridalwear behaves a little differently from ordinary clothing. Wedding dresses do not always have much hanger appeal. Corsetry in particular can look surprisingly boxy when a dress is hanging on a rail and then look completely different once it is properly fitted to the body.
That is one reason most bridal boutiques work by appointment. Someone can help you into the dresses, fit the samples properly and show you how the design is intended to look.
Different bridal businesses also work to different timelines.
At Anna Schimmel, we offer our own designs rather than retailing bought-in wedding dresses. We generally like to start working with a bride around five to eight months before the wedding. Some larger bridal retailers encourage brides to order much earlier, sometimes when the wedding is still around a year away.
There is no universal wedding dress timeline, so check the lead time of the boutiques or designers you are interested in before you book.
8. Choose your bridal appointments carefully
You have done the homework, thought about your own style, had a look through Pinterest and worked out what you are drawn to. Now it is time for the wedding dress appointments. How exciting!
Choose bridal boutiques and designers that broadly fit your budget. There is nothing wrong with making one aspirational appointment, but if your budget is limited to $2,000, booking an appointment with a designer whose wedding dresses begin at $5,000 is unlikely to be particularly useful.
Do a little research before you book. Look at the general price range of the wedding dresses you are interested in and find out what services each bridal business offers.
Some specialise in ready-to-wear gowns. Some offer made-to-order wedding dresses. Others specialise in custom or bespoke work.
At our own Auckland bridal appointments, I see brides who have found Anna Schimmel online and already know they love the designs, brides who are visiting us as one of several bridal boutiques, and brides who have come through a personal recommendation with ideas they would like us to explore.
All of those are perfectly good ways to begin.
Knowing roughly what to expect makes it much easier to choose bridal appointments that are genuinely useful to you.
9. Who should you bring to a wedding dress appointment?
Friends and family are welcome at bridal appointments, and choosing a wedding dress is absolutely something worth celebrating.
The important thing is to bring people who understand that the dress has to feel right for you.
I have seen groups who are wonderfully encouraging and interested in what the bride thinks. I have also seen appointments gradually turn into a stream of opinions, until the person wearing the wedding dress has almost disappeared from the conversation.
It is your wedding and your dress. You are the person who has to love it, wear it and feel beautiful in it.
Bring the people who nurture you, value your opinion and are happy to help you discover what you love.
In my experience, two companions is a magic number. It gives you enough people to share the experience with while keeping the appointment personal rather than turning it into a committee meeting.
10. Plan your wedding dress appointments so you have time to think
When I speak to brides who have a full day of wedding dress appointments booked, I nearly always ask the same question: have you left time for lunch?
If you have one bridal appointment followed immediately by another, it can all begin to blur together. Give yourself time in between to sit down, have something to eat and debrief.
Talk about what you tried, what you loved, what surprised you and what you might like to explore next.
These days almost everyone takes photographs at wedding dress appointments, so you do not need to make every decision while you are standing in front of the mirror. Look at the pictures again later. You may suddenly realise that an A-line skirt had exactly the right amount of fullness, or that you loved a neckline more than you realised at the time.
While you are there, pay attention to something else as well: how did the appointment make you feel?
Did you feel looked after and understood? Were you comfortable asking questions and talking through your ideas? Did the person helping you listen? Did you have enough time to think?
You are choosing more than a wedding dress. If you order from that boutique or designer, you may be working with them for months. Feeling comfortable with the person who will guide you through the process matters.
Choose appointment times when you are fresh rather than tired or rushing. Daylight is helpful too, as it lets you see colour, texture and movement in fabrics more clearly.
Our wedding dress consultations at Anna Schimmel are complimentary. Other bridal businesses may charge consultation fees, so it is worth checking beforehand if you are planning several appointments.
The aim is not to fit in as many bridal appointments as possible. It is to give yourself enough time and space to discover what really suits you.
11. What should you wear when trying on wedding dresses?
At many bridal boutiques, someone will help you into the sample dresses, so be prepared to undress. Nude-coloured underwear is usually a good choice, particularly with lighter fabrics.
In my experience, you generally will not need shoes for the appointment. Most bridal shops will ask you to step onto a podium so the dress can fall properly, and shoes can sometimes make that feel a little unstable.
If you do bring shoes, make sure the soles are clean so the sample dresses stay clean too.
It is also worth thinking about makeup and fake tan. Wedding dresses are generally pale, and makeup or tanning product around a neckline is surprisingly difficult to avoid once it is there. Keep makeup to the face where possible and handle the dresses with care.
And one very practical point: arrive with clean hands.
Wedding dresses are often made from pale, delicate fabrics, so wash off the chocolate cake before you start trying them on.
12. Start by working out what you like
Trying on wedding dresses is the exciting bit. Enjoy it.
There is no need to put yourself under pressure to find the perfect wedding dress immediately. At first, simply get a feel for the dresses themselves.
Notice their weight and how different fabrics behave. Some are structured and dramatic. Others are floaty and soft. Beading can look amazing and feel a little scratchy against your skin. Lace may look beautiful, or you may discover that a particular pattern feels too busy for you.
I find it helps to begin by trying a few quite different looks and working out what is a definite no, as well as what has potential.
Love the presence of a full skirt? Explore that further.
Definitely no strapless because you do not like how it looks on your shoulders? Move on.
Perhaps you had never considered sleeves and suddenly love them. Maybe the sleek crepe wedding dress you saved on Pinterest does very little for you, while a softer A-line shape feels wonderful.
You do not need to make every decision at once.
Breaking the search for your ideal wedding dress into smaller yes and no decisions makes the whole process much easier. Each decision gives you another clue and gradually a path starts to form.
You can explore the possibilities properly, rule things out with confidence and move forward knowing you have given yourself the opportunity to discover what really suits you.
And of course, you may be one of the lucky ones who finds the right dress almost immediately.
13. How does a custom wedding dress begin to take shape?
When a bride comes to see me for a first consultation, I begin by sitting down with her and listening to her wedding plans.
That gives me an initial framework: the setting, climate, scale of the wedding and general feel of the day.
A bride planning city cocktails may naturally be drawn towards something more modern. A rustic barn wedding may suggest something softer or more romantic. These are not rules. They are clues that help me understand where we might begin.
Some brides arrive with only fragments of an idea.
They may have seen an overskirt they love, a particular neckline, sheer sleeves or some other detail they cannot stop thinking about.
As we try on wedding dresses, we begin exploring those ideas.
A sample dress may fit poorly, but the bride may love the feel of the fabric. Another may have completely the wrong skirt but exactly the neckline she had imagined. Something she thought was essential may suddenly matter much less once she sees it on herself.
Developing the ideal wedding dress can become a process of identifying these building blocks.
Perhaps it is a square neckline, a full A-line skirt and sheer sleeves. From there, we work out how those elements can be brought together in a way that suits the bride, works with her proportions and becomes something new.
I create many custom wedding dresses this way.
The aim is for each one to look beautiful, feel wonderful and fit perfectly, while also having something individual about it.
It should feel like her wedding dress.
14. Exploring your wedding dress ideas with a calico fitting
One of my favourite ways to explore a wedding dress idea is through a calico fitting.
Once we have gathered the ideas a bride loves, or formed a loose picture of the wedding dress she has in mind, I will often suggest making a calico mock-up.
For many brides this is a completely new concept.
I spend around half a day putting together a simple cotton calico version of the proposed dress. It is created specifically for the bride, for her figure and from the ideas we have discussed.
There is a $200 charge to cover my time. If the bride goes ahead with her wedding dress, that amount is credited towards the gown. If the calico fitting does not convince her that this is the right direction, there are no strings attached.
Brides love these fittings because the mock-up gives us the freedom to play with the design while they are actually wearing it.
Not quite the right neckline? Let us cut into it.
Would the waistline be more flattering with a point? Perfect. We can pin in the new line and compare it immediately.
Could the skirt be fuller? Should the bodice be a little longer? Would the proportions improve if the waist moved slightly?
We can explore those ideas directly on the body rather than trying to imagine them from a sketch.
Brides are often surprised by how easy some decisions become when they can see and compare the changes on themselves.
A calico fitting also shows what becomes possible when a skilled designer is concentrating directly on your ideas, your proportions and the way you want your wedding dress to feel.
And the design does not necessarily finish there.
Once we begin making the actual wedding dress, there is usually more tweaking and fine-tuning. In some cases, we rethink part of the design completely as the gown develops.
That is part of creating a custom wedding dress. The first idea gives us a direction. The fittings allow us to keep improving it until the proportions, fit and details come together beautifully.
A great wedding dress takes work.
15. Once you have chosen your wedding dress, trust your decision
You have chosen your wedding dress. Hurray!
Deciding on and ordering a wedding dress can be surprisingly nerve-racking. Once you have actually made the decision, you will probably feel much lighter.
Let yourself enjoy that feeling and move forward.
There will always be more wedding dresses to look at. Continuing to compare your decision with every new image you see rarely makes the choice feel better.
This is particularly important if you are having a custom wedding dress made. The early stages of your own dress are naturally going to look very different from a finished gown photographed in perfect light, fitted to a model and presented in carefully edited campaign imagery.
Give your own dress the chance to develop.
Turn your attention to the next lovely parts of the wedding instead. Start looking at bridesmaid dresses and flowers. Find something beautiful for your mum. Think about shoes, jewellery and the other details that will eventually bring everything together.
These are the natural next steps while you continue working with your chosen designer or bridal boutique.
You have made the big decision. Now enjoy watching your wedding dress come to life.
16. The final weeks before your wedding
Only a few weeks to go. Can you still sleep?
By now, your wedding dress should be in its finishing stages.
A beautifully made wedding dress should have good construction, a tidy finish and a fit that feels secure and flattering.
Bodies can change slightly and fabrics do not always behave exactly as expected, so the final fitting may still involve a few small adjustments. Usually this is simply a matter of fine-tuning the fit and making sure everything sits exactly as it should.
Knowing you will be in the spotlight can feel quite daunting, so I prefer the finished wedding dress to be safely in the bride’s cupboard around ten days before the wedding.
That way she knows the dress is finished, fits beautifully and is ready to wear. It is one less thing to think about during those final busy days.
Then the dress can simply wait for you.
Still have questions about how to find or create your ideal wedding dress?
Book a personal appointment with Anna at our Auckland bridal boutique to try on beautiful wedding dresses, explore what suits you and talk through your ideas.
See you soon!
