Other than my usual daily dressing dilemmas, this year I am getting married and so have had to face the biggest What should I wear panic. I use the past tense ‘had’ as I have bought my dress , the dress. I managed to pick one up at the end of last year in a wedding dress sample sale, and I am glad it is out of the way; one less decision to make.

Choosing my wedding dress was not easy. Trying to decide whether I should go for modern or traditional, how much I should spend, where to buy it from… I looked at magazines and websites for inspiration, and for a while this was my dream dress: Elie By Elie Saab at Pronovias
The £5000+ price tag was a tiny bit out of my price range, and so helped me make my decision. I decided maybe sample sales would be a good place to find a gorgeous dress at an equally lovely price.

Anyway the sample sale was held at a hotel, and I didn’t really know what to expect. It was timed entry and so I turned up at my allotted time of 5:00pm, along without about 30+ other girls and waited patiently in line.

When we were finally allowed in, the brides to be were given instructions on what was to follow: you would be measured and told what size dress to go for, go into the rooms filled with dresses and choose five to try on, lastly go and try them on in the hope that one of your five chosen dresses would be your wedding dress. Sounds simple and it was.

The part that I didn’t like though was the part where she said, once you were measured you should choose a size UP from what you normally wear. What?!? Why?!? Apparently, it was nothing to worry about and was just the way designers cut the dresses, it didn’t mean anything.

How can she say ‘not mean anything’? Of course it meant something. In 30 seconds I would have gained a dress size, without even having had the pleasure of eating something delicious.

I know there has been all the talk on the high street about vanity sizing, things being cut larger to make you think you are slimmer than you are. You would think that would be a good principle to apply to wedding dresses; obviously not!

So with my new ‘larger’ dress size I begrudgingly went to look at my plus sized rail thinking all I would find were sequin covered sacks. To my surprise I found three that didn’t repulse me or look like Liberace cast offs and headed for the changing room. I found this was actually just one big communal changing room with lots of semi-naked brides-to-be. More trauma.

Needless to say one of the dresses I picked turned out to be the ‘one’. It looked a lot nicer on than it did on the hanger, and looking back I was  too quick to judge. I put it down to the shock of going a size up. Now all it needs is some altering to make it fit properly in the right places,  and I can’t wait to finally wear it.

Now all I need is some shoes!