Valentines Day

Wedding Dress Shopping in the East Midlands

You know it's funny, I knew this was going to be a difficult game as I hadn't seen many dresses that I liked and I'm not exactly an average size. What I was completely unprepared for though was just how rude the staff/owners of wedding dress shops are. I've been dress shopping a couple of times. Once with my Mum just to visit a couple of shops and get a general idea and once with my little brother when we did a real trawl of shops from Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby and Coventry. He was genuinely astounded at how badly people treated us! (I'm so tempted to name the worst offender but for now I won't!!)

My top tips for shop owners would be as follows:

- Make sure that your staff are polite to Brides of all sizes

(My price range for a dress, without accessories, was somewhere around the £1,000 - £1,200 mark. Why the hell would I spend that amount of money in a shop where the staff are rude or just plain disinterested!!)

- If your website says that you don't need to make an appointment then this needs to be the case. No point your first snappy question being 'have you made an appointment?' or 'we can't see you without an appointment'

(I refer you to point one and er,.....your website says I can just rock up!!)

- Also if your website states that you a bride is offered champagne then this should be forthcoming......not a single shop offered this even if stated although some of the better ones did offer juice and biscuits!

- Spend time trying to understand what the bride wants even if you think I would look better in another style, you could at least be polite about it.

- I want to touch the dresses, wearing gloves or treating me like a chocolate covered 2 year old is really annoying

- Also annoying is saying you are a plus size stockist when actually you only have a single size 16 dress!!

On to the good news......there were some lovely people and shops out there that offered great customer service. They were:

Bradgate Brides, Anstey, Leicestershire

Pink Confetti, Broughton Astley, Leicestershire

Alison Evans Bridalwear, Church Greasley, Derbyshire

Amore Plus Bridal, Dunchurch, Warwickshire

Some really friendly, lovely service with helpful people that went out of their way to give a good experience. I now have an amazing dress and veil and am very much looking forward to W day :-)

p.s. this is not actually me or my dress.......

Silent Sunday