Say Yes to Less Stress

Hopefully you have already found How to choose your salon Part 1 and are well-equipped to start thinking about where to start your dress journey and the sorts of questions that you can ask a salon to help you with that.

There is one thing, though, that I didn’t include in Part 1 that is such an important factor that I decided it really needed its own post.

Two types of brides (yes, I’m stereotyping)

A highly skilled bridal consultant knows that every bride is unique; however, for the sake of ease, I’m going to stereotype and break women looking for a dress into two archetypes. See which one you fit best into but don’t worry if it’s neither – or a bit of both! This is just for the purposes of helping you work out what kind of salon you are looking for to undertake your dress search.

The Confident Bride  
If this is you, then you’re feeling excited about dress shopping. You think about your appointment with anticipation and you’ve already decided who you’re bringing with you. You’ve been adding images of gorgeous gowns to your Pinterest boards and you’re itching to get some dresses on to start working out what’s going to best suit your body, your venue and the vibe of your wedding. You’re pretty sure that once you’ve found your Yes Dress you’ll be want to tell anyone who’ll listen!

The Hesitant Bride
If you’re a Hesitant Bride, it doesn’t mean for one second that you don’t want to get married. You do. And you absolutely want to find a dress that makes you feel amazing. At least, in theory. But you’re just not feeling it. You have NO idea what will look good and while you do enjoy looking at pictures of dresses, it starts to feel overwhelming pretty darn quick. Depending on the day, the thought of going into a bridal boutique makes you feel anything from mildly anxious to completely terrified.

Two types of salon

You may have worked out immediately which kind of bride you are or, again, you might feel like you’re a mixture of the two archetypes. Now let’s do the same with bridal salons. While each salon has its own unique approach to how it works with its brides that can’t be easily categorised, there is a major element that sets different salons apart and this is whether they have open or closed viewing areas.

What’s the difference?

If you have ever watched the TV show Say Yes to the Dress you’ll know that while brides get in and out of dresses in a fitting room with their consultant, they have a ‘public’ or open viewing area. That is, it’s in a salon with an opening viewing area: you go outside to the main part of the boutique for your entourage – and potentially other brides and their entourages – to see you in them.

A salon with a closed viewing area is one where everything happens in the one room. You get into dresses in a curtained-off area of the room with your consultant with you, but only your people will be in the larger room. It is, effectively, a private room.

Now, if you are a bride who is more Confident than Hesitant, an open viewing area may not be an issue for you at all. You are happy to have as many people as possible involved in your dress selection. You may find a great vibe is created when a bride says ‘yes’ in an open salon and everyone in the vicinity gets to be part of that.

In contrast, if you land more on the side of the Hesitant Bride archetype, the thought of putting on wedding dresses and displaying yourself in them to the rest of the world could just be enough to put you off wedding-dress shopping altogether.

This may be particularly – though not exclusively – the case if you have a parlous relationship with your body, mirrors, and clothes shopping. In this case, you may want to think about whether you look exclusively for salons that have private viewing. As well as being private, these can be more intimate, can create a real sense of occasion for you and your entourage, and may give you a bit more confidence about emerging from the changing room.

One more thing

Regardless of which bride archetype you more fall into, the thing you need to know is that not all dresses will fit you. Some will be too big, yes, but many will be too small simply because it’s not feasible for any salon to stock every dress in every size. Consultants have lots of tricks for getting you into a dress that doesn’t fit but this does require some skilful clipping and sometimes dresses won’t be done up completely at the back when you come out to stand up on the pedestal and in front of the mirror. For some brides – likely those more towards the Confident Bride end – this is a just ’meh, who cares?!’ moment. For others having their fingernails pulled out would be preferable. If you’re the latter, look for a private or closed fitting room.

The takeaway

What you want is a great salon with lovely, caring consultants who use their knowledge and skills to find you the dress that lights you up; the one you never want to take off. Even if you are a Hesitant Bride, you may be willing to sacrifice a private viewing space for a salon that word-of-mouth tells you will give you an amazing experience. Just make sure that word is from some fellow Hesitant Brides as well as the more Confident ones!

~~~~~

If you had to choose one, would you say that you’re more a Confident or Hesitant Bride? And whichever you are, what’s the most important thing for you when looking for a salon to visit? Drop me a comment and let me know!