Wedding Gowns & Bridal Fashion

Marriage is one of the biggest event in life, so you really want to make sure you are at your best top to bottom.

One of the important ingredient, which enhances to the brides beauty is their bridal wear.

So how to choose the bridal wear, which matches your body shape and size?? This is a big challenge for most of the plus size women.

Step One
It’s normal for the plus size women to go through this challenge of choosing the bridal wear to find the flattering figure to look their best.

Main thing is to get the clothes that fit’s you and to be comfortable with it.

Identify your body shape. Is it hour glass, round shape, Pear shape, Inverted triangle etc etc… It’s not possible to talk about all the body shapes and it’s clothing fit here, so I am just scoping it to pear shaped body. Here are some basic guide lines:

Many plus size women have this misconception when they want to choose their dresses. They would want to look for clothing based on their size and end up with returns, exchanges because of the mismatch. Please ‘Go by your measurements and not by the Size” because you may have to go up or down in size depending on the dress, and also….if the dress needs any alteration– it’s easier to get a bigger size and go down than trying to work around a too small dress. Adding fabric can just make a dress look tacky, so go up in size. But there are few like Lane Bryant, Davids bridal who run pretty true to the size.

Step Two
Think on which style & color of the dress you want and what’s your budget. You can check the online stores www.adhis-plussizefashionwear.com to have an idea. If you can think of some style, you can go to www.theknot.com and do a search. You will be surprised that you will come across lot of designers that you didn’t even know. Alternatively, you can just choose the color and let the attendants pick the dress that flatters them.

Step Three
It’s always better to try the gowns on? Plus, it’s good for the soul to see yourself as a bride with some focus on what you like. Besides make it a fun to shop for such a great occasion and tailoring is generally a must for formal gowns most of the times.

Step Four
There are often times that you can set up an appointment to try on gowns and bridal shops may pull some in advance for you if you give them your measurements and a few preferences on your favorite assets to show. A lot of bridal shops can do this if you call to inquire about sizes. Oh yeah, and totally ignore going by the size as said earlier. For one thing I’ve seen many formal gowns (as a bridemaid) that only come in standard sizing. That means the size may be 4 or 5 sizes higher than the number you are used to seeing.

Step Five
Whether your style is dramatic, chic, romantic, natural or timeless…it can help you find a more definite direction as far as style goes. One of my friend was a Timeless bride…..she wore a vintage dress in a princess style with pearls for her day…

Step Six
As far as wedding gowns go for pear shapes, it’s actually lots easier than you think. Because most wedding gowns bell out that is in your favor. The styles to stay away from are mermaid, column and sheath styles which will do nothing but accentuate the fact that you are bottom heavy since they are close cut all over - although with some major custom tailoring from a clever seamstress, those styles can sometimes work, but are much trickier.

Step Seven
You could go for princess seams, flounces and trains, empire cuts. If you are confident of your upper body a simple strapless number will do. You also will want an open shaped neck-line with nothing buttoned up high under your chin. This could be square cut, strapless, scoop, vee, sweetheart - doesn’t have to show a lot of cleavage if you don’t want, you just don’t want to close off the shape giving your sort of triangle look.

Step Eight
By opening the neckline shape you’ll create more of an hourglass shape to your figure visually. Pears can very successfully wear puff sleeves, and wider bell sleeves with a close fitting bodice too, if those are styles that tickle your fancy. Stay away from anything shapeless.

Step Nine
Be careful with small mom-and-pop bridal shops. There was a situation where they closed suddenly-leaving no contact info or anything. They left many brides, and many high school girls who had purchased their prom dresses there, in the lurch.

Step Ten
To me, I got white color for my wedding dress; it was superbly gorgeous and high quality, got it really cheap. It was pretty white one with purple and pink beaded bits to break up the white background.

On the same note, red one with black velvet would look great but do please check your liking. Don’t hide behind dark colors; pinstripes can turnout to be very flattering.

Step Eleven
Have long gloves for the lower part of your arms. I have heard of good things about the red wedding dresses of Chinese made. A lovely qipao or something like that would be a nice way to cover the arms. Hope you don’t have any issues with your heels, since there are so many plus sized concerns with heels. Anyway do check on your “stability factor” with heels on.

Step Twelve
As far as accessories go, I usually see very less in weddings but some of them do like to wear. I have also gone from wearing a dressier jewelry to much more cool laid back one. Usually I find women like the organic look and the designs mainly made of gemstone components. To what I know, the one of the issue in jewelry for plus size women is the size. Bracelets and necklaces always seem to stop at size7”. The biggest accessory that takes the center stage is the ring. Rings always have to be specially ordered, and same goes with watches. Be very cautious on choice of your jewelry, some of them really match well to the body and on the other side, a wrong choice will turn a plus size women into a hippie.

Step Thirteen
It’s definitely not possible to spill out everything in this little space here but just shared the minimum basic stuffs.

You may also pick up some Bath & Beauty tips and advises, that I have bundled it in an ebook and giving it away free at www.adhis-plussizefashionwear.com

Be sure to leave your comment at my site. Your valuable comments are key to the new book to be released.

As I said earlier, these are just some of my suggestions, do check on your liking. It doesn’t really matter what’s your size or your age, once you understand what looks good on you with a comfortable fit. Remember that being able to lace up for a perfect fit alleviates a lot of dress-fit stress. You will start to feel more confident and sure to raise your self-esteem.

I Love my curves
Curvywoman
www.adhis-plussizefashionwear.com

The traditional sample size for designers to send bridal boutiques is a size 10, which in bridal actual translates to a size 6 or 8. Not the most encouraging sight for a plus size woman.

Fortunately, a lot of designers have picked up on the fact that women over a size 14 don’t necessarily want to wear a big, lacy, satin catastrophe, and are designing plus size gowns with a lot of style. However, if you’re still not crazy about the idea of shopping for your gown in a store, a try shopping online with Igigi.

The bridal gowns are more on the informal side, but beautiful nonetheless. Additionally, there are a variety of bridesmaids’ dresses and dresses suitable for fashionable wedding guests and mothers-of-the-bride as well as well.

Lisa Alpern-Cucinotta remembers how her pilgrimage in 2003 left her weeping with happiness.

It wasn’t a trip to Jerusalem, the Ganges River or Mecca. No, the plus-size fashionista, then 25, had arrived for the first time at the altar of Torrid at the Garden State Plaza.

Alpern-Cucinotta, a Washington Township native with a degree in design, found herself strapped for clothing options. She had always been a “curvy girl,” usually wearing sizes 12 and 14 available in mainstream stores. Though she lived in the limbo between “straight” sizes and plus sizes for a long time, a few extra pounds gained in college put her squarely into the plus-size category.

She thought she would never be able to find trendy clothes again. Plus-size fashions in the early 2000s were, in her eyes, disappointingly dowdy and unflattering. But the selection of clothes at Torrid was different.

“Here were the funny, funky T-shirts that any twentysome-thing girl wants to wear,” she said. “They had sexy skirts and sexy shirts. I have never been that excited. I probably took 45 things in the dressing room and spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars.”

A fashion desert
Although the demand for plus-size fashion has been growing for at least a decade, many women like Alpern-Cucinotta are still wandering in a fashion desert — especially when shopping brick-and-mortar stores. Specialty stores are still a tiny minority in shopping centers, and mainstream clothing retailers never seem to have room in their stores for special sizes.

“They simply don’t carry the sizes we’re looking for,” said Christine Alt, a plus-size model who does consulting for Lane Bryant’s newly renamed catalog line Woman Within.

Can plus-size women ever find well-designed, quirky clothes that fit their bodies and their personalities? Or are they doomed to shop at a handful of specialty stores?

The answer may be at the click of a mouse. For those who eschew the commute and crave variety, cyberspace may be the new dressing room. Web site portals dedicated to plus-size fashion like beautyplus power.com — founded by Alpern-Cucinotta after her Torrid adventure — direct you to deals online and smaller plus-size lines that haven’t made it to the malls, advertising their friendly phone and Internet sales services. There are blogs, bulletin boards and countless shopping Web sites that collect the best of the trendy plus brands.

“The Internet is a great sales channel for niche markets because of the laser-like marketing accuracy it provides,” said Scott Silverman, spokesman for online retailer network shop.org.

According to projections by Silverman’s organization, 10 percent of all clothing sales — plus-size, regular or otherwise — are expected to occur online this year. Apparel, accessories and footwear sales reached $18.3 billion in 2006 and are expected to hit $22.1 billion in 2007, a figure that surpasses online sales of computers for the first time in history.

Add that to the fact that the latest Centers for Disease Control survey puts the national percentage of overweight adults at 32.2 percent (in New Jersey it’s 20 to 24 percent), and you’ve got a market segment ripe for development.

“With more and more designers realizing that the majority of American women are plus size, the fashions have gotten hipper, cooler and much more accessible,” said Alt.

Bigger sizes online
Because they are able to ship products from warehouses for online sales, mainstream retail companies also are widening their range. The youth apparel store American Eagle, for example, sells XXL and sizes 16 and 18 only on its Web site, ae.com. Ann Taylor Loft goes up to size 18 online at anntaylorloft.com.

Alpern-Cucinotta added that plus-size women can do a lot better at a mall nowadays than five years ago. “There is a current trend in body consciousness, in more form-fitting clothing,” she said.

Teens are still out of luck, she said, but new lines like Fashion Overdose (fashionoverdose.com) are starting to fulfill their needs online.

It’s just in time, apparently, since the next segment of the population that increasingly needs plus-size apparel may be juniors and children. The CDC reports 17.4 percent of Americans ages 12 to 19 are overweight; so are 18.8 percent of those ages 6 to 11 and 13.9 percent of children ages 2 to 5.

“Every third dress we make is for a plus-sized child,” said Marge Hyland, formerly of Morris County. Hyland’s company, Pegeen .com, tailors formalwear for children. Now based in Florida, she creates perfect fits for young girls by sending out a bodice pattern to the customer for a trial fitting before making the dress.

“A girl might feel like she can’t be in a wedding party because she’s too big,” said Hyland. “It’s horrible. … All little girls want to feel like a princess.”

An additional problem for girls now is early development, she added. Girls who develop adult-sized bosoms at 9 or 10 have a difficult time finding a good fit, especially when they are only about 4 feet tall.

Plus sizes for kids, too
While Hyland provides a tailoring service, children’s clothing company Gymboree has online-only slim and plus sizes for everyday clothing. JC Penney offers “junior pluses,” and Limited Too has “half sizes” in stores. The trend has pushed up to teen brands like Aeropostale and American Eagle — but in both cases, extended sizes are only online.

The mainstream stores, especially the savvy ones, are learning what their customers want — and for now, the Internet offers a cost-effective solution. But shopping for plus sizes is still a pain.

While shopping recently at a plus-size boutique in Brooklyn, Lee Lee’s Valise (leeleesvalise.com), Alpern-Cucinotta had an illuminating experience. She noticed that thin women who were attracted by the window display were walking into the store — only to be disappointed when they discovered there was nothing in their size.

“It’s usually the other way around,” she said with a chuckle.

Plus sizes online

Here are some online options for plus-size apparel.

• Alight.com: The online boutique now has a brick-and-mortar presence in Long Island (998B Old Country Road, Plainview).

• Alloy.com: The Web store serves up extended sizes in jeans, with inseams up to 37 inches.

• Beautypluspower.com: This site links to trendy items that are hard to find, like wide boots. Also see the blog at beautypluspower.blogspot.com.

• Fashionoverdose.com: With an icon featuring a crowned skull and rose garlands, this is not your mother’s plus-size clothing line. The fashions skew young and fun.

• Kiyonna.com: The closest stores that carry Kiyonna brand clothing are Herban Legend in Hammonton (Atlantic County) and Lee Lee’s Valise in Brooklyn.

• SizeAppeal.com: “Be Bold and Sexy Because You Can” is the motto of this line for plus-size women. The collection specializes in party wear.

Source: NorthJersey.com

If you belong to the plus size category and love to wear fashionable clothes but shy away from doing so, you are missing out on being part of an industry that is growing faster than Osama bin Laden’s terror network.

Consider this: In 2006 alone, sale of plus size clothing was estimated to be $76 billion. Market hawks say by 2012, this industry will be rocking at a whopping $100-billion mark.

So gear up all ye voluptuous women, shed your inhibitions and grab your shopping bags to enter a world of fashion clothing where you will find everything — from evening gowns, bridal wear, jeans and T- shirts to bras, bikinis, panties and thongs — in your size!

Fashion gurus have long since woken up to the fact that unless they design clothes for the ‘bigger’ half of world population, they will not be able to tap the fashion industry to its fullest potential.

It is no wonder then that almost a decade later, plus size clothing has as many styles, prints and colors as mainstream fashion apparel. All this and more, for this industry doesn’t stitch loose-fitting, baggy clothes to hide over-sized vital statistics.

What you have instead are well-fitting garments that accentuate curves, making plus size people feel and look alluring. Plus size clothing aims to make a woman feel confident and good about herself.

Hence, there’s no point shying away from splashing in a swimming pool with your friends. Don’t feel bad just coz you’re big. Grab a trendy swimwear tailor-made to emphasize your contours and make you feel sexy in the sand.

And if it is your special day to walk down the aisle, you can choose from a wide range of wedding gowns designed for plus size women. Bridal wear for your kind is now available at all leading fashion stores, replete with laces, styles and satin.

Plus size clothing industry does not just cater to women. Even big size men and children can avail themselves of the fashion luxury. From pants, shirts, T-shirts and jackets, every fashion facet is at their disposal.

It is not for nothing that they say: Size does matter!

Source: Fibre2fashion