Posted by Meaghan Cody
You’ve picked your bridesmaids and now you’re searching for the perfect bridesmaid dresses. You are probably realizing it is hard to find a dress that will flatter all six or seven of your bridesmaids. So what should you do about it? How about let your bridesmaids pick their own dresses? EEEEK. That is a scary thought! What if they don’t pick the right color? What if it is hideous? We went ahead and asked one of our past brides, Caroline, how she handled letting her bridesmaids choose their own dresses.
You may have seen Caroline and Nick’s wedding posted on our blog last week! Here is what Caroline had to say:
“I just let my bridesmaids choose their own dresses (they came from JCrew, BHLDN, Nordstrom, TJ Maxx and Dillards) . Lucky for me, I have friends with great taste and they all know what looks good on them and since the grey colors for the season were really only in two shades, it worked out well. I think the best part about the dresses was the way the colors looked the same- I believe this was accomplished by me giving examples of colors I liked to the girls — I chose 4 dresses that I liked the color and style-theme, cocktail, of and emailed them with instructions. So then as each girl chose her dress, I emailed a picture of it to all the girls so they each had an idea of what the overall look was. And then I saved the pics in a word doc so I could see them all together. And one dress REALLY didn’t work and so I gave her a dress I thought matched the other girls and she was happy with that! Anyway, I think the key points are:
1) totally let go of style restrictions if you’re letting them choose their own dresses and you’re NOT selecting a company to specifically buy from (like don’t say it has to be strapless or something). And if you make a style restriction and someone chooses a dress violating it, try to let it go until you can see the big picture of all the dresses. This helps because it’s really hard for the girls to choose a dress that’s actually cute when you put too many restrictions on the dress or tell her she has to choose something you, the bride, would like. I learned this from being in a wedding where I chose my own bridesmaid dress.
2) I think it also helped that I decided one of the “themes” of my wedding was “doesn’t match”. Because I had a look of things not being uniform, it all fit and seemed cohesive. “
Photo courtesy of Perez Photography
