Since my post, What Type of Bride Are You?, garnered so many interesting and fabulous responses, I thought I would do a follow up post about how brides express themselves through the “art” of their dress. I’ve stressed time and again how brides today have so many options when it comes to dress design, silhouette, and details. But in reality, this is only true if you put the time in to do your research. During my dress search, I found that despite all of the pretty pictures I spotted in magazines, 98% of affordable wedding dresses looked sorta the same: strapless, white, and long. This frustrated me because although I wanted something simple and timeless, I was busy drooling over $6,000 gowns when my pocket book said, “Spend no more than $1,000”. And the $1,000 or less pile was filled with essentially the same gown re-created over and over again. {Sigh}

So, the purpose of this post is to get the creative juices flowing and to showcase affordable reader dresses that step outside the box. Or maybe you didn’t “step outside the box”, but found a dress that spoke to you…for whatever reason. Or maybe you made your own dress or found a way to alter a pre-existing gown and make it your own. Or maybe you decided to wear or re-create your mom’s dress. {Love that concept, by the way!}

I truly believe that some of us want individuality when it comes to dresses, but get intimidated when we walk into bridal stores and see the same stuff time and again. I spent probably 40 hours + online searching for my dress. It was a fun project that, for the most part, I loved doing. However, some women don’t have the time, the patience, or the desire to troll around on the internet for countless hours. I hope that some of the responses to this post can help us find new, exciting, and plausible options so that every woman can have a shot at finding “the dress”.Feel free to provide links to pictures of your dress or designers’ websites or just leave a tidbit of advice you’d give to someone starting the dress search.