Now this has little to do with the cats, but all to do with my life, so it has to have a place on the blog. During the 100 happy days challenge I got engaged to the only man that puts up with me, and started organizing our wedding. Luckily I got a wedding planner I was referred to by my newly reunited all time friend.
However, there are things that can’t or better not be organized by your planner. Dresses are a good example. I have been looking around bridal shops in Brussels, but I didn’t find anything I really liked. Read hundreds of articles about how to choose the perfect dress for my body type (let’s just call me very compact) and looked at a 1000 dresses online. There are shapes I’d love, but can’t imagine wearing. Since I’m not huge, most of the fluffy dresses would pretty much swallow me but I loved huge and fluffy dresses. I wanted lace, I didn’t want lace..
One thing was certain; I did not want to break the bank. Some say being frugal at your wedding means you are not ready to invest in your marriage, but I simply think this is stupid. I’m just not ready to spend a 1000 Euros on something I will wear once. (No, no one gets married in the same dress for the second time.)
So I did my research and figured, the cheapest option is to order online. Mainly from China. After seeing horrible images of dresses you can actually receive from China I was somewhat cautious but still very curious. Some sites would include pictures of actual dresses they sent out. Dressilyme or Lightinthebox are good examples. And there are also Etsy shops. Yes. You can order a handmade wedding dress from Etsy. I found LaceMarry there, and I was tempted to order from her for weeks! Actually, even after ordering a wedding dress already I’m still very tempted.
I finally ended up ordering my dress from Chi Chi, a small shop in London and it turned out to be fantastic quality. I will upload some pictures after the wedding and you can all get into shock about the less than a 100 EUR price tag.
After gaining confidence from this order, I decided the bridesmaid dresses will come from online, too. I first wanted to get those from Chi Chi, too, but thanks to me daily visits of those Chinese clothes retailers an ad popped up. The perfect bridesmaid dresses. Out of nowhere. So after thinking about all the horror dresses I could get, I still decided to order. 69.99 each. Bargain.
And did they turn out okay?
Let the pictures speak for themselves. Ordered from Lightinthebox.
Important: if you are in Europe you’ll have to pay extra customs duties. You can buy Tax and Customs insurance at checkout. Totally worth it. Once you send them the confirmation of the duties paid they will reimburse the amount. They reply within 12 hours. Actually impressed!
Life with the Cats 