Attendant's Outfits

Men can hire suits, women can hire dresses! Unless your bridesmaids have lots of spare time, or you're very fussy and know that they will always love you, don't get their dresses made. It requires endless fittings and effort and people have been known to drop out of the whole affair when the dressmaking hassle starts. It's also a lot more expensive these days, if you use a dressmaker to make all your attendant's outfits from scratch. However, if you have a sewing relation or friend who has the time, skill and a convenient location to the wedding party members, go for it! The two easiest choices are hire or buy off the rack. Hire shops are a good choice if you have a specific colour and/or style in mind and a variety of different sized bridesmaids. A good hire establishment will have 3-4 dress styles in each colour and a size range from 8-18, hopefully two dresses in each size. Once again, attack the yellow pages and ask around. If you want to buy - look at boutiques and department stores before going to the specialty bridal stores. You can find beautiful dresses with a much nicer price tag at the former. If you are not convenient to a city, there are also mail order bridal wear catalogues available.

Attendant's Shoes And Jewellery

Fussiness is something to forget about. Think - who is all the attention going to be on? THE BRIDE. Think of weddings you have attended as a guest - have you noticed the attendant's shoes or jewellery? Probably not. Take your bridesmaids out for coffee and discuss your ideas and get their feedback. You may find they both own pearl stud earrings and square toed black court shoes. You may be able to reach a compromise.

Sort this out over coffee too. If your attendants want to do their own make-up, reach agreement on the sort of colours and heaviness, for example light foundation, autumn colours for lips and eyes, no coloured eyeliner or mascara. This is an easy way to avoid ending up with one doe eyed beauty and one trowelled dragon!

Decide how their hair should be - talk about tiaras, flowers or not. If you have some short haired bridesmaids and some long haired bridesmaids, the long haired may have to put theirs up - it is pretty unreasonable to expect someone to cut or grow their hair to be your bridesmaid! If no-one has the time or confidence to do their own hair or make-up you could get a package deal at your local salon. I found it was going to be more expensive to have a stylist or artist come to me on the day, as most charge extra for home visits and their eyes lit up when confronted with the "W" word. However there are now specialised travelling make-up artistes in business who specialise in weddings etc so investigate all options. You could ask your normal stylist if he/she does wedding parties and you could all go in together on the day, that way you can oversee and you have your attendants there to help calm your nerves! A make-up alternative is to see if you can book them in for a "make over" at one of the large cosmetic counters at a department store - it means being on display like a store dummy, but it's inexpensive or even free. Above all, see if you can do a "trial run" a week or two before, particularly if the products being used are not what your bridesmaids normally use. You want to see how it will turn out (could be horrendous!) and also just in case someone might have an allergy to any of the products, you have time to make other plans.

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