Don't judge the dress by a picture

In an age of digital cameras and smart phones, we have great tools for wedding planning at our fingertips. Many brides come bridal gown shopping armed with cameras, phones and iPads ready to snap away to study the photos at a later time. This can be very helpful, but also harmful if you don’t take certain things into account. First, the lighting in the store can distort the image and the colors may not come through well. Second, the camera may not capture the detail of the gown as well as it looks in person. Third, the person taking the photograph is probably not a professional, so the angles may not show you in your best light. And finally, the dress probably does not fit you properly and you will look back at the photo and be unable to see how great the gown really will look when it is fit perfectly to your body. Some stores won't even let you take photos in their salons partly because of these reasons and agreements with certain designers.

So, while being able to go back through photos after trying on several gowns can be a help when narrowing down the styles you like, it is no comparison to seeing the gown in person. Don’t rely solely on the photo. Think about how it made you look and feel in the moment when you were
trying it on. Same as when you see photos of models in magazines in gowns you love and then see them in person and are not wowed, you also can have that experience with photos of yourself. So go back and try your favorite on in person, even if you don’t love it in photos. There’s no substitute for the real thing!