Don’t forget to buy your bridal shoes right after you purchase the dress

Oftentimes, when brides think of their wedding day outfit, all they think about is the dress.  Countless hours are spent canvassing wedding magazines and bridal stores for the perfect wedding dress.  Advertisers also focus a lot of time on this, and the end result is that the bride ends up with a great dress, but without wedding shoes.  This isn’t a problem until it comes to alterations and standing on your feet all day.

Since wedding dresses need to be altered 6-9 months ahead of time, having the bridal shoes beforehand is more important than the bride may think.  Without the shoes, the bride is left to go searching for a bridal shoe that will match her dress.  The biggest problem here is that shoes come in different heel heights and without knowing what the heel height will be, the dress alteration is an estimate.   This happened to me during my wedding planning.  I spent a month searching for the perfect dress.  I didn’t know what I wanted so this made the search even more difficult and my estimate on timing was a bit delayed.  Then, after I purchased the dress, I assumed I was done with the outfit.  I didn’t think about it again until the dress came.  When the dress came and I was fitted for alterations, I completely forgot that I needed to have my bridal shoes in order to make sure the hem length was correct.  Therefore, we used different shoes under the assumption that I would quickly and easily find bridal shoes.  Little did I know that this would be such an ordeal.

Since I’m a petite woman and my husband was a bit taller, I chose higher heels for my alterations.  Unfortunately, the heels I chose were 3.5 inches.  Little did I know how hard it would be to find bridal shoes that were exactly 3.5 inches.  I looked everywhere – in stores, online, in friend’s closets.  Each time I would find a shoe I liked, I realized that the heel height didn’t work.  Some heels were only 2.5 inches while some platforms were more than 4 inches.  I didn’t want my dress to drag on the ground, nor did I want my shoes to be awkwardly sticking out.  So, I kept on searching for the 3.5 inch shoe.

The process ended up taking me more than 2 months.  Of course, I didn’t search every weekend, but I kept my eye out for a shoe that I liked.  One other problem was that many shoes were not comfortable.  Finding comfortable bridal shoes was like finding a needle in a haystack.  Many were cute, but the higher heels put more pressure on my feet and I wanted to make sure my feet weren’t damaged by the end of the night.  This made my search even more difficult.

I finally found a pair that were comfortable and looked good on my feet.  The biggest thing I learned was that you should definitely look for your shoes earlier.  Right after you purchase that dress, start looking for shoes.  That way, you aren’t tied to an exact heel height since you can alter your dress to fit the shoes.  If I could go back and change anything, it would have been to find the bridal shoes earlier.  This would have saved me a lot of headaches and worrying during those months that I was trying to do all of my other wedding planning.