More years ago than I want to recollect, I read one of Meg Cabot's 'other' series than the Princess Diaries which were, I believe, collectively known as The Heather Wells Mysteries. They had titles of Size 12 is Not Fat, Size 14 is Not Fat, Big Boned/Size Doesn't Matter, Size 12 and Ready To Rock and The Bride Wore Size 12. I remember thinking at the time that they were somewhat strange titles because a UK size 12 is definitely not what I would call "fat", but then I realised that a UK 12 and a US 12 are totally different sizes, and the size 12 Cabot was writing about was a UK 16, and the 14 would be a UK 18. These sizes are typically relegated into the realm of plus sizes, which I guess is sometimes seen as synonymous with being "fat".
One of the things mentioned in the novels is vanity sizing, which is essentially where the store or designer mislabels a size intentionally so if you are a size 12, you wear a size 8 and apparently feel better about your life as a result... I mean, I guess it's better than the shrink sizing which has happened over a number of years or a number of brands where sizes are deliberately made smaller, possibly in an effort to make people feel bad about themselves.
You then have the joys of bridal sizing, which is quite frankly the single biggest farce on this planet as far as I'm concerned. Oh, you're a perfect 10? You'll be in a 14 then. You're a size 8 with chesty blessings or had a boob job? Size 18, and lots of adjustments even in a corset back. I know that a lot of dresses need adjustments because people want their wedding dress to be perfect and that's a struggle with something of the rack, but I don't really understand why there is a problem with making clothes with a recognisable size for people so they don't have to spend forever trying to figure out what size they are, or should be, or might be and getting ever more frustrated because it feels like nothing fits.
One of my dresses for the wedding day came from a charity bridal boutique which I love. The other two were from pre-loved online marketplaces, but were a bit of a nightmare because of sizing. One sent me the measurements of the dress and I thought it would be fine after a bit of exercise (postpostum kidding yourself that you'll "bounce back" doesn't help with wedding dress shopping) and the other I looked up the brand, went through their sizing chart and had to consult a measuring tape, but it wasn't quite the say yes to the dress experience you imagine. The best "experience" I had was definitely in the charity boutique. But that dress was a certain size, and so many brides picked up that dress, and tried it on, then had to put it back because the size on the label is two sizes bigger than the measurements are actually. It makes preparing for what is billed as one of the best days of your life really depressing, tedious and all sorts of negative emotions that no bride is seeking out. Or at least I don't think they are.
Now, I fully intend to keep hold of one of my dresses, because the more I see it or think about it the more I love it, and the idea of letting it go makes me sad and that might be because I'm writing this pre-wedding, but I don't think so. I've always been overly sentimental about clothing. The other two I'm happy to sell on, because they're gorgeous and they deserve to be part of a big day, they're not cheap and it would be nice to get some money back for them, and because environmentally, a dress that is many layers more than it needs to be, specialised material, with at least some plastic in the ribbons or the embellishments or other parts, worn once by one person for not even a whole day is quite frankly a disaster. But how do you sell on a wedding dress? The impression I get is there is no perfect way.
I'm not someone who has dropped between £900-£1500 on a dress and wants to make about 70% of that back, but I've seen it on marketplace and Vinted. These dresses aren't even like Vera Wang or similar, but relatively run of the mill dresses... If you are selling a dress for around £100 or under, you seem to have more success. Another thing which can help is trying on, but naturally, brides are searching from all over the country, and the likelihood of finding someone super close by with the right size, style and price is not exactly high. You can put your dress into places like the charity boutique I went to and that's awesome because it supports charities - mainly the ones I know of are hospices, which is cool - but it does mean that the bride who is getting rid of the dress just gets a nice feeling at having offered some support as opposed to a bit of the money back from the amount they spent, so that's not going to work for everyone... I would love if wedding fayres hosted a pre loved dress sale for wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses etc! But I also appreciate there would be a lot of admin in that and it would mean it was competing with the bridal stores showing there which I don't think would go down well.
I believe, though I don't have the details for them, that there is a business in the UK, perhaps more than one, who have dresses in their store, sell them on to new brides and then the person who previously had it gets a cut from what the store sells it for, which is pretty cool, but something that strikes me is that there are thousands of pre-loved dresses which people are trying to part with and thousands more made every year, so the market is massively over saturated, so getting rid of your old dress can take months, or years, and eventually people decide they want the space back and dump a dress into the nearest charity shop where it may not even sell...
So what's the point I'm trying to make? Or am I just going on with myself because my brain has turned to mush from all the wedding planning and baby raising. Probably option two. But also, in an ideal world wouldn't it be cool to keep reusing wedding dresses and sort the sizing out on them so that it was far more simple for them to be found and loved the way that they should be?
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