Your Wedding Dress Timeline: Top Tips to Help Your Search

Your Wedding Dress Timeline: Top Tips to Help Your Search

Once you get engaged, everything gets set on a timeline. Once you secure the venue and have a date, however, that timeline is set in stone. If you want to get everything in and ready and prepared by that date, then you need to reach certain milestones on the dot. If this stresses you out, then hire a wedding planner who can organize things for you on the ground. What they can’t help you with, however, is finding the second “one”, or, in other words, your wedding dress.

Finding your wedding dress is also on a timeline, so to help you stay focussed, make sure you hit these dates:

What You Can Do at Any Time

You can start looking for wedding dresses, designers, and ideas before there’s even another person in the picture. You can start from the moment things start to get serious, or even start when you get engaged. Regardless of when you start, you should start and spend a little bit every day looking. This is how you’ll learn the terms for the things you want, understand what’s out there, and what brands you enjoy most. This way, if you realize you adore Ronald Joyce wedding dresses, for example, you can find the exact styles in a boutique near you and cut out the endless searching.

Try to Buy Your Dress at Least 9 Months Before

The reason why it’s so important to start looking online for ideas as soon as possible is that you’ll ideally want to buy your dress nine months before your wedding date. This is because most dresses are made to order in your exact size. If you don’t have that kind of time, then look to buy products off the rack. This means that you bring the dress from the boutique home with you.

Nail Down Your Accessories around Five Months Before

If there are any additions you want a tailor to add to your dress, then you’re going to want to have these at least five months before your wedding. Accessories like shoes can be purchased right up to the end date, unless they too need to be custom-made and sent to you. When it comes to hair accessories, just try to have these chosen and selected by the time you go to your MUA for the first tests.

Get Your Dress Around Three Months Before Your Big Day

In general, you should get your dress within a three-month window. This gives you enough time to try the dress on, get any issues fixed in your first fitting, and those changes to be made. Your second fitting should occur a month or so before your big day, and then your final fitting should occur two weeks before your wedding.

Pick Up Your Dress


You will then need to pick up your dress. This should be around a week before your wedding to give you that necessary buffer time where you can instead focus on other detail matters. By giving yourself so much buffer between each step, you should be able to accommodate any issues or mishaps, so stick to this timeline and enjoy your big day.

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