I'll take the sheath style with a brush train in taffeta

November 6, 2015 11:01 AM

17 surprisingly useful diagrams for narrowing down your wedding dress shopping Buzzfeed - where else?
posted by St. Peepsburg (20 comments total)

I love that the upper left bodice style is called "the crumbcatcher". If only all styles were that descriptive: instead of "cathedral length veil" you have "the dirtdragger"; instead of the "deep v-neck" you have "the great-aunt scandalizer".
posted by Elly Vortex at 11:23 AM on November 6, 2015 [14 favorites]

That was the first thing I noticed as well! As someone who will never wear a wedding dress, I scrolled through this thinking "no...no...oh god no...no...wow really?...no...ooh, crumbcatcher! That's something that would actually be useful in my daily life!"
posted by phunniemee at 11:32 AM on November 6, 2015

I was hoping that would take a serious turn for the Night Vale near the bottom of it.

Does your skull quite fit the veil you've chosen? It's your special day, and many thing can be adjusted to fit your special day. Which will you choose?

You need to cover your legs, and everything else. Does your fiancee know? Have they seen? Perhaps they will, on your wedding night. Perhaps it will be magical, and they would love you for it even more. If they have the choice. If they remain. But until then, consider your train carefully. You need to cover your legs. And everything else.
posted by mhoye at 11:37 AM on November 6, 2015 [29 favorites]

Does your skull slope back so abruptly that you could hardly be said to have a forehead at all? Does your chin slant off to nothing? Are your eyes small and round with shallow, glazed, pink-yellow pupils? Are they set wide apart on your head, unwinking and staring, like a fish's eyes?

Try a "mermaid" style dress in taffeta!
posted by bonehead at 12:17 PM on November 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

I like how full figured brides get two options: A-Line( Dress That Totally Conceals roughly 50% of your shape) and Empire (Dress that Totally Conceals roughly 75% of your shape). And no ballgowns for you, chubsters!

But seriously: weddings are so weird. If you're going to spend that much money to be ogled by your relatives at a fancy party, why not wear exactly what you want?
posted by thivaia at 1:19 PM on November 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

If I end up with a super easy going fiance, I'm planning on convincing her to do our vows in bathing suits at the beach and running into the water after the kiss.
posted by numaner at 1:23 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I got married 18 years ago and this piece triggered all that wedding-gown-shopping anxiety I had totally forgotten about. Jesus.

Ladies: wear whatever you like that you want to wear. Men too. Hire a wedding planner. Don't end up having a fight at the Burger King over why your spouse needs to make sure his groomsman remembers to shave the day of the wedding instead of looking like a hobo in a tux. Which he refuses to do, for (really incredibly stupid) Reasons, and then you break down and sob over your shitty hamburger in front of god and everybody because goddamn, it's just One More Thing and you are about to lose your fucking mind over this goddamn wedding.

Or maybe just elope.
posted by emjaybee at 1:51 PM on November 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

Buzzfeed - where else?

This is particularly ironic since as near as I can tell, none of this is Buzzfeed content. (Don't get me wrong; they make lots of great stuff at Buzzfeed and there are many, many things to like about it! But this particular thing seems to just be copied from other sites, and they've added essentially nothing original to it.) I wish they'd start labeling stuff like this with whether they got permission or had any contact with the people who did the actual work on all these graphics.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 2:07 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is particularly ironic since as near as I can tell, none of this is Buzzfeed content.

If you read Reddit at all, this isn't surprising in the least.

Artists do neat stuff on blogs -> Unattributed screencaps aggregated on imgur and posted to reddit -> buzzfeed article the next day -> local news at 6 the day after.
posted by bonehead at 2:27 PM on November 6, 2015

If I end up with a super easy going fiance, I'm planning on convincing her to do our vows in bathing suits at the beach and running into the water after the kiss.

That sounds AWESOME! I'm in the middle of wedding planning and in a reversal of stereotypes, I'm open to hippie anything but he's the one who wants a special kind of day.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:34 PM on November 6, 2015

A waist-shaping thong? That sounds like the most uncomfortable and impractical undergarment in the entire universe. I can just imagine putting one on and squashing down my midsection only to have it blorp out directly over my butt.
posted by Metroid Baby at 3:05 PM on November 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Or maybe just elope.

If you get married by a judge, you don't need a witness! Judges are considered pretty trustworthy, and they like doing weddings cause it's much more fun then other judgey stuff.

The more you know💫
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:28 PM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sorry, why call it a "watteau train" when you could call it what it is, namely, A CAPE.

I have never in my life wanted a wedding dress, or even a wedding, really, but do I want to get married in a cape? Yes, I do.
posted by Sara C. at 4:29 PM on November 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

I bought a fancy "pre-loved" dress* through eBay and I have zero regrets about skipping every single part of wedding dress shopping.

*it actually had a crumbcatcher and now I'm sad I missed the chance to hide hilarious surprises in there, such as magic tricks, alien puppets, or snacks.
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:37 PM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

The part about how to pee....good god.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:24 PM on November 6, 2015

I will wear a dress made of the skins of my vanquished foes, like all the wives of my lineage.

Our foes are mostly dairy products.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:56 PM on November 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

Cheese rind bodice and a train made out of the foils from yogurt cups?
posted by phunniemee at 8:07 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was coming in here to cantakerously suggest that diagram #1 should be can you actually afford the dress, like actually, not with credit card debt or eating ramen and fighting for 6 months yes:no, but to my surprise that is actually point #1, so good job there.

Of course, my take on things as an ex-spouse with a Box Of Wedding Sadness slowly mildewing* in a U-Haul locker, my advice is more than a little Ancient Mariner-esque, and should not necessarily be heeded, although it is right.

Anyway, as ever, my bony fingered and glittering-eye'd suggestion is that people concentrate their financial and emotional energies on their marriage generally, and not the crazy societal pressures of the wedding-industrial complex.

*it is not mildewing. U-Haul's storage lockers are both climate controlled and surprisingly affordable!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:25 PM on November 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

My wedding dress was made by a seamstress acquaintance of my mother. I found the pattern at Joann's, the fabric at a smaller local shop, asked her if she could make some alterations to the design, bing bang boom no fuss no muss.

(Except for the part where the dress wasn't done until two days before the ceremony. That was a little stressful.)
posted by Lucinda at 6:52 AM on November 7, 2015

If I end up with a super easy going fiance, I'm planning on convincing her to do our vows in bathing suits at the beach and running into the water after the kiss.

Our maid of honor, in the process of resisting wearing a dress to our wedding, actually said "I always thought the two of you would get married in the beach in torn jeans." That was the beginning of the process that lead to her being fired as a maid of honor.

She didn't have much trouble bugging a wedding dress- went to David's Bridal, got great customer service, and beautiful styles that fit her apple figure. One visit to choose, one for fitting, Done.
posted by happyroach at 10:38 AM on November 7, 2015