"When I look at the wedding photos, my heart aches."
Elsa*, 34, community manager, dreamed of associating her wedding dress with the happy memory of the “happiest day of her life”.
But the quest for the perfect dress didn't go as planned.
Seven years after her marriage, the sight of her outfit still gives her a feeling of bitterness.
Each year in France, nearly 230,000 brides look for the dress with which their union will be celebrated.
A quest for the ideal garment that is based on multiple expectations, such as that of pleasing oneself, as well as one's spouse and guests.
To which is often added a symbolic charge: "The particularities of clothing are all the more asserted in a rite like marriage which involves a social issue, exalting a genealogy and an alliance of families", recalls Anne Zazzo, author of
Marriage
, the catalog of the thematic exhibition held in 1996 Palais Galliera.
Social pressure exacerbated by the new visibility given to the ceremonies via social networks.
And fueled by the fantasy of finding the perfect dress, fueled by movies and series like
Bridesmaids
(2011),
Sex And The City
(2000), or television shows such as
La Robe de ma vie
(M6).
To this table is added the financial factor, which can be significant for an outfit that will only be worn once and whose first price is rarely below 500 euros.
Enough to make the choice of the wedding dress a perilous issue, which some have not managed to resolve, with regret.
Disappointed brides who testify today to their failures.
“Without consulting me”
Suzy* may say that her story is "from another time", her injury is still very present.
To celebrate her marriage, on May 25, 1985 in Oxford, United Kingdom, parents and in-laws had agreed to offer the engaged couple a “beautiful ceremony”.
In other words, to bear the costs.
The 24-year-old young woman, then a student, agrees to have her dress made by her mother.
A model she imagined with an empire cut.
"Months pass, and nothing," recalls Suzy, who resolves to hurry her mother, a few weeks before the deadline.
The case goes wrong.
"My mother, my father and my sisters went shopping in London for the wedding and bought the fabric for my dress, as well as the veil," she says.
Before specifying: “Without me, and without consulting me”.
Result, the
fabric is not to her taste: "The fabric was really not pretty, satiny with inlaid patterns", explains Suzy, who then did not find the courage to express her disappointment.
"I should have said: it's a horror!", She regrets today.
However, intimidated by the generosity of her parents, she does not dare to make a scene.
For his part, her fiancé is a victim of the same situation, and has his tie imposed on him by his family.
Since then, the subject has remained taboo, which has not tainted the longevity of his marriage.
The one who will celebrate her wedding anniversary of mercury (38 years old) made it a point of honor not to reproduce this pattern the day when, in turn, she accompanied her daughter to find her wedding outfit.
She says proudly: "We did I don't know how many shops until she said: 'wow'".
"I wanted to be seen"
"I went all out," jokes Sarah about her imposing wedding dress.
The young woman decides to marry in 2006, her studies just finished.
The ceremony is set for July 9, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
From the height of her 22 years, she is among the first in her entourage to pass this milestone.
Without landmarks, she relies on the trends of the moment to choose her wedding dress.
She confesses: “I always like to be fashionable, which is a double-edged sword”.
After multiple fittings, one model wins: a low-waisted dress with a corset with exposed underwiring and a long tulle handkerchief train resting on a hoop petticoat.
“I obviously had feathers and rhinestones added to the bustier... There was a bit of everything!
Then I had, unsurprisingly, a tiara.
Bet won: the outfit was a great success with her friends and her husband.
Sarah finds herself "very beautiful", ignores the lack of comfort and the logistics that such an outfit requires: "I think it took half an hour to get me into the car because the dress was so overflowing."
Once the wedding is over, time does its work and, quickly, what was up to date seems obsolete to him, "
too much
".
In the end, Sarah agrees with her mother, who throughout the preparations never stopped recommending a simpler dress.
“When you get married at the age of 30, it's still much more thoughtful, argues Sarah.
Especially now that social networks and Pinterest allow you to find inspiration!”
Seventeen years later, the one who now works in the fashion world reconsiders her choice with humor.
This does not prevent her from recommending that future brides bet on timelessness.
"I laugh, but I want to remarry just to buy a dress worthy of the name," she admits.
In video, The first images of the wedding of Princess Iman of Jordan:
A major problem
The wedding dress showcase ball, Mathilde, 30, wanted to do without it.
At least for the outfit worn on her wedding night.
A slim saving for this young entrepreneur based in London, who had planned a total of six dresses for the festivities celebrated in the British capital in 2021. The outfit reserved for the party had to meet a number of criteria: short, chic, white , recognizable without being too expected and at a reasonable price.
She sets her sights on a dress from ready-to-wear brand Khaite, which ticks all the boxes with its square neckline and baby doll cut.
The order is placed on the brand's website, and arrives safely six months before the big day.
“I am quite
relaxed
on the sizes”, warns the young bride.
Sure of herself, Mathilde is not in a hurry to try her purchase.
It was only two weeks before the ceremony that she finally decided to put on the dress, to find that the zip did not reach the top, blocked at chest level.
How about choosing your wedding dress on the fall-winter 2023-2024 catwalks?
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow30 photos
See the slideshow30 photos
“All the designers I consulted told me: it's impossible to add fabric.
It took me ten days to find someone who could do it."
The one who “especially did not want” her marriage to be a “blockbuster” is biting her fingers for not having anticipated this pitfall.
In extremis, Mathilde manages to recover her dress, but the desired effect is not there.
Worse, the garment is uncomfortable: "I was compressed at the level of the chest", she remembers, before ironically: "In addition, I have a rule: if an outfit is too low-cut, it must not be too short.
Well, that didn't apply to that event!"
Even if she admits to having taken the thing a little too lightly, Mathilde rails against a guide of measurements which played tricks on her in the choice of her size,
which never happens to him.
His moral of the story: “Absolutely go and try on in store, or at least always question the measurements of merchant sites!”
Baby boom
The marriage, the dress, Caroline did not attach so much importance to it.
And for good reason, his plans did not quite go as planned.
In 2012, just before embarking on working life, the 25-year-old young woman decided with her partner to start a family.
Months pass without the expected pregnancy beginning and the couple agrees to marry in April 2013, in Seine-et-Marne.
"When I said: 'I'll stop trying, otherwise I'm going to be pregnant at my wedding', I got pregnant," says Caroline, still amused by this twist.
The event is maintained: the birth is scheduled three months before the ceremony.
On the other hand, when the time comes, it is impossible for her to try on wedding dresses.
Seven months pregnant, Caroline naturally entrusts her sister with
put on outfits for him.
And stops her choice with a certain detachment: "My mother, who gave me the dress, said 'Oh, I like that one' and then my sister tried on the dress and I said 'Yes, let's go on this one, it suits you well.
Between her delivery and the day of the wedding, Caroline finally slips into the dress for the final touch-ups.
She then notices that the piece, in organza, with a skirt "a little meringue" does not look like her at all.
It is too late to back down: "but under the effects of hormones, I think I was not myself" she deduces.
It was only later, when she received the photo album, that the image struck her: less slender than on her sister, who was ten centimeters taller, tight at the chest... The rendering of her dress is far from what she imagined.
“Even my husband told me: 'Still, she wasn't great'” laughs Caroline.
Without resentment, she admits to having paid more attention to her baby than to clothing, and prefers to laugh about it.
Only his mother remains camped on his positions.
She does
A Monoprix dress
With 280 guests, the cost of the ceremony was enough to reach heights for Elsa and her fiancé, who had chosen to largely finance their wedding themselves.
The dress not appearing in the priority items of expenditure of the ceremony, celebrated in Loire-Atlantique in August 2016, Elsa chooses to turn to an accessible model.
That year, the Monoprix brand launched an affordable collection with the Lora Folk wedding dress brand.
“I had seen the dress and I said to myself: this is really my style.
In addition the price suited me.
It was really what I needed.”
First difficulty: when it was released in January, the collection was taken by storm.
Elsa mobilizes family and witnesses from all over France to manage to get their hands on the model.
"Already,
quite a schmilblick”, she breathes.
But the young woman is not at the end of her troubles.
The 2023 collection of Laure de Sagazan wedding dresses
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow20 photos
See the slideshow20 photos
Once the dress is found, the bride-to-be is disappointed: the size is too tight.
"I told myself that I had time, that I was going to lose a few pounds," she says.
However, the day of the ceremony is approaching and the young woman ends up coming to terms with the facts: she will not fit into the garment.
And must find a seamstress to enlarge the dress, even if it means altering its style.
“In the end, everyone saw nothing but fire.
Lora Folk was a recognized designer, I was happy to wear one of her pieces, but here I was, I knew she was patched up,” recalls Elsa.
The disappointment goes beyond the simple look of the dress.
“With hindsight, what I regret is not having had a good time with my witnesses.
Of not having gone to try on wedding dresses, of not having lived the
emotion to tell me 'Ah, this one is the good one!'”, she laments.
And to conclude: “I could not have put two thousand euros in a dress.
But the fact remains that to those who are going to get married, I recommend not to sacrifice the budget at the price of memories.
*Names have been changed
