I can thank Pinterest for finding me my perfect wedding dress! I found this photograph (below) of a very beautiful relaxed looking bride at her wedding and knew that I NEEDED that dress!
I then found the link to all of the photos from the wedding of Alyssa and Brad in the Hunter Valley, their wedding has been featured lots in magazines and online, these made me want this dress even more. Credit to The Robertsons for using this photograph.
After a lot of back-tracking I managed to find out the name of the designer.
Credit www.annacampbell.com.au for the above photo of the Rebecca dress.
I’d already tried on a few dresses in our local bridal boutique in Caterham, Helena Fortley, so I had an idea of what styles would suit me. I love lace. My maximum budget would be £400 (a gift from my Mum) so I started researching. The dress I had fallen in love with was by an Australian designer called Anna Campbell – I then found out that it originally cost $4,000 AU!! Ouch…..
I checked out Still White which is a second hand bridal gown site, I found one which had been sold second hand for around $2000!! Double ouch…..
I then found out that the only Anna Campbell stockists on the UK were Luella’s Boudoir in Wimbledon, not too far away for me to check out, but again they did not have this particular dress.
So after more research I found that two company’s make copies of this particular dress – both in China. Now, I’ve seen some pretty terrible photos that went viral of dresses that have been made in China, so I was quite dubious at first. One of the companies was only charging £90, again I checked out some of the feedback and it wasn’t fantastic.
I then discovered Briday Dresses based in Shanghai. I checked out some of the reviews and the majority of them were really good, if there were any complaints it was usually about the sizing being slightly off. I sent a message to them and got a quick response from the owner, Judy, I asked so many questions: Had they made this particular dress before? How similar would it be to the photos? What type of lace would they use?
Their response was always very quick to any questions, and they’d given us very thorough advice on how to take accurate measurements. The price was a fraction over £300 including delivery to the UK. So, we decided to risk it! Would I be one of those brides crying into my awful cheap looking dress? I certainly hoped not.
I sent lots of messages throughout the process and the dress arrived in under five weeks of us ordering it. Payment is through Ali Express online. I was able to track the progress of where the dress was after it had been shipped. We’d given plenty of time before the wedding (six months) just in case there were any problems. They had been very honest with me all along, it is not a dress they had made before, and I was told it would be roughly 90% similar to the original photograph.
Well – apart from the lace at the front of the dress being a fraction too long (which Mum cut) it fitted perfectly. The materials used were of an excellent quality, and all the lace work and detailing were amazing.
I can’t say that every bride would take this risk – but I did – and we saved so much money in doing so, of course if you can afford to spend big then why not?!
Thanks very much to all the team at Briday Dresses!
Photographs of us copyright of Anarchy Photography.