I'm going to put aside my 'wedding planner hat' for a little while and just speak as a bride-to-be. Planning your wedding should be, and often is, a fun thing to do. Despite the inevitable stress and nerves, I think most people look back with a certain fondness on how they managed to make their wedding reflect the peculiar bunch of qualities they have as a couple. Since Mr Moosh and I got engaged, I've been having a great time searching through the huge range of things on offer in the wedding industry to make sure we have the wedding we want (Mr Moosh doesn't like wedding planning so it's all down to me). This is what inspired me to finally take the plunge and start my own business so that I could help other couples do the same. One thing I've not been enjoying, however, in any way at all, is finding my wedding dress.
When I first got engaged, the last 'fair' type thing I'd been to was the BBC's 'Big Bash' in 1996, so I was curious to try at least one wedding fair before I got married. I chose the National Wedding Show because I thought I'd come away with so many ideas and things sorted that there'd be no need to go to another fair. Since then, I've been to a handful of local wedding fairs in Bristol, and particularly enjoyed the ones that had a vintage theme, but I booked tickets for the National Wedding Show anyway to enjoy a day out with my Mum and bridesmaid. I'd heard that there would be a large selection of wedding dresses to try on, and this was one thing I was particularly keen to see.
I came away from the National Wedding Show not brimming with ideas, but rather disappointed. Actually, not just rather disappointed, but very unhappy. That's a much better reflection of the emotions I went through when I'd found not one single wedding dress in my size. I hold my hands up - I'm a size 16 (UK) and not pretty. I don't expect there to be hundreds of things especially for me. On the other hand, it's not just film stars who get married. On the dress stands where they were having a sale I can understand there being a limited range - that's all they have left - but on the stands where bridal boutiques were showing their range of dresses, why not have copies of each dress in several sizes? Why was everything size 10 or 12? Don't they want to appeal to as many customers as possible? As I watched other women walk out of the various changing rooms and be admired by their friends and family, I was left feeling like I wasn't being allowed to get married. It's stupid really - it's just a dress - but choosing your wedding dress is meant to be a nice thing, not something that makes you wish you could get married in your pyjamas.
Aside from dresses, the selection of suppliers at the National Wedding Show was rather odd. There were an unusual number of stands dedicated to getting married in other countries. It's lovely if you want to get married abroad, but I'm probably right in saying that most brides at the show would be marrying here in the UK, and would prefer a few more UK suppliers. There was only one florist, tucked away in a corner. The cake makers we spoke to all did their usual thing of not wanting to deal with so many allergies. There was meant to be a special 'vintage area', but this turned out to be a little cafe where you could get tea and cake, and a tiny handful of stands where people had the word 'vintage' in their name. My Mum, bridesmaid, and I found the fashion show rather amusing, especially the part where a hapless male model had to dress up as a mythical faun 'Pan the piper' (at least that's what we thought it was alluding to). The popular blog, Rock My Wedding, were there, but the feedback from the microphone was so bad we couldn't hear what the poor lady was saying. Looking back on the day, the only highlights were finding the stand dedicated to getting married in Cornwall (we're getting married in Cornwall so this was relevant), and bumping into IDo Wedding Videographers who are based here in Bristol and who are a really lovely bunch and well worth checking out.
So a word of advice: as with most things, it's better to go local when looking at wedding fairs. Oddly, you're more likely to gain inspiration from a smaller, local fair than something the size of The National Wedding Show. After all, if you can talk to a local florist and see the flowers they could provide, you can narrow down what you want because you can ponder whether that particular florist can do your wedding. If the only suppliers you can talk to are ones that cover parts of the country you don't live in, then it's much harder to think things through. Also, if you're not a size 10/12, don't bother going to the national show, because they won't have any dresses for you and it's not much fun being made to feel like an outcast. As for my own dress, the option of turning up in my pyjamas is looking more and more inviting.
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