The Search For The One Continues & It’s Not All Roses

After a successful first day of wedding dress shopping, I really looked forward to our second outing. This time H & I decided to make it a double whammy and booked two appointments for the same day – we were feeling very ambitious indeed!

Our first appointment was at the beautiful Bridal Bliss boutique on the North side of the city. We arrived in plenty of time and were greeted by a lovely young lady who invited us to take a seat and look through some catalogues while another bridal party finished up. Less than five minutes later, we were up!

We were shown each dress in turn to which we said yay or nay – quite a few beautiful gowns and quite a few yays later, I was ushered into the spacious dressing room. I tried on four dresses but none gave me that “wow” factor until I stepped out onto the podium in that fifth dress and looked in the mirror – it was very contemporary, very fitted and felt amazing on. I knew this dress was another contender and of course, at that stage I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, picture my beloved first dress. The ever practical H took out her phone and quickly put it back in her pocket when she spotted a “No Photographs” sign on the wall!

All-in-all, great service as well as amazing gowns at Bridal Bliss. 

We then moved onto our second appointment of the day at Rice n Roses located in Frankfield. I was quite looking forward to visiting Rice n Roses as I know many brides who purchased their dresses there over the years. As we pulled up to the door, we notice another bridal party waiting outside and then another car parked beside me – so far, 3 brides.

After waiting out in the rain for 5 minutes, we were all led in to find yet another bride waiting patiently bringing the total to 4 brides with the same appointment time. A girl who was no more than 15 advised us how it would work – we were each given about 10 coloured tags (each bride had a different colour), told to tag the dresses we liked and someone would help us, the girl then promptly disappeared and we did not see her again. H & I looked through the rails unaided & tagged a number of dresses, some of which were already tagged by other brides.

After some time, a few ladies paraded down the stairs & shouted names, pairing off with each bride once they responded. A petite lady introduced herself to us and led me into the changing room. The room itself was very shoddy and the curtained off changing area was no bigger than a standard dressing room in any shop, therefore it was impossible to close the curtain and have any privacy while changing as wedding dresses do require quite a bit of space. The assistant brought in some of the dresses I’d chosen and I began to fit them on - while the assistant was quite pleasant, I didn’t find her helpful, she agreed with everything I said about any dress and didn’t offer advice or solutions. If I didn’t like a dress, it was promptly untied & whipped off me, straight out of the changing room & given to another bride. I felt very self-conscious during the whole process so didn’t even try on some of the dresses in the end.

I left the shop feeling very underwhelmed and certainly would not have bought a dress from there even if I loved it. A wedding dress is an expensive purchase so brides should be made feel special at least but that did not happen for me – I felt like a battery hen.

So day two of dress shopping was a mixed bag but I now had another fabulous dress to add to my list for consideration.

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