Wedding Gown Shopping Tips

Mark Ingram, owner of the prestigious Mark Ingram Bridal Atelier in New York, offers these tips for finding the right salon and the right dress.

When should a bride start looking for her gown?

"I believe that a bride should start shopping for her dress at least eight months, minimally, before her wedding day. A year is ideal to really start the first shopping experience. Normally gowns take anywhere from twelve to twenty weeks to be delivered to the store and then you have to add on at least a two-month fitting schedule. Brides don't realize that it's a really long-term process. It has to be made, ordered, delivered and then altered."

You've said a bride should do her homework first before coming into a salon so she saves herself a lot of time. Tell us about that.

"She should realistically look at her budget, think about her wedding venue and her vision for her wedding and plan to visit salons that could fulfill those dreams for her. Know which brands are carried in the salons before you get there. Don't make the assumption that because they carry one brand they carry all brands. The best salons are the ones that really focus on a certain kind of look and cater to a certain kind of bride. I try to keep my salon focused on a very contemporary, more upscale bride, sort of fashion forward."

"There's so much information for a bride to utilize before coming into a salon. There's internet, there's all the bridal magazines, there's television, so there's no reason why a bride should walk into any salon not having some information about price range, about fabrications, about the looks that are available out there for her."

We've often heard a bride say that she walked into a salon wanting a certain look and then fell in love with a completely different look. How does the shopping process work?

"We try to steer them in the right direction in terms of the silhouette of the dress that's appropriate for their body type, that's perfect for the venue. It's not just about the dress and how the dress looks on a girl. It's really about the whole aura of what the dress feels like on her, how good she feels in it, does it fulfill part of her fantasy, is it appropriate for the wedding and the venue."

Besides finding the right style, there's finding the right color, too.

"Most girls historically think that white signifies a wedding, but there are so many shades of white! You can go to a paint shop and go through paint chips-how many hundreds of whites are there? There are dark whites, blue whites, pink whites, grey whites, but, truthfully, most girls don't look well in white at all. Most girls look best in pale shades of ivory and I'd say that eighty percent of the dresses that we sell in my salon are shades of ivory, from almost a milky white ivory down to almost a taupe. Of course [bridal designer] Monique Lhuillier has been using shades like latte and cappuccino and toffee for years and girls really respond to that. Mix that with ivory, maybe an under-layer, with some ivory lace. That adds dimension to the dress too."

And what if you want to lose weight before the big day?

"So many girls come to the salon and they say "I'm going to be losing twenty pounds." And I always say, "You got the man. You've already got him. He loves you just the way you are!" I think she wants to look her best on her wedding day, but what is the best really? Because of the stress of the wedding and all that they're involved in, brides will naturally lose five to ten pounds normally before the wedding date."

"If a girl is going to change her physical body type dramatically, she is going to be in contact with the store during the process. She'll often say to us, "I plan to start a Pilates class or a yoga class, my body is going to change. "We advise her to be careful not to become to muscular because when you turn the fat into muscle, it will bulk you in certain areas like under your arms, in your 'lats', your arms, that might change the fit of the dress dramatically. You might become wider where you might think you're become narrower. Your back may become broader and we can't zip your dress up."

"So it's very important that we communicate during the process and then we can make changes with the design." We can call and say, "The dress on so and so for so and so bride, can we start production on this dress, can we make it larger or smaller?" And often times the designer can work with you, if you catch it early enough. The eleventh hour isn't the time to be coming in and telling us that you've lost or gained twenty pounds."