I have just spent 4 days in steamy Dubai - fantastic to get away from the bad weather here, and I was even prepared to put up with the humidity just to feel some sun on my face. Well, sunny and humid it was, but a fantastic place with back to the future buildings, and some serious shopping available to all in huge malls.
It's a relatively short flight at just over 6 hours, but it gave me enough time to watch a couple of films. One of which was 27 Dresses.
27 Dresses, stars Katherine Heigle (playing Jane) who is always the bridesmaid but never the bride. She scours the papers for marriage notices, and devours every detail, dreaming of the day when she will be the bride. She's bridesmaid to 27 of her friends, even attending two weddings on one day. The 27 bridesmaid dresses - dutifully preserved in Jane's cramped closet range from gothic to Little Bo Peep, to cowgirlish, from too revealingly slight to eye-stingingly garish. She really had to be a best friend to wear some of these outfits. She models each and every one of these outfits to Weddings Journalist "Kevin".
Which made me think about how far you would be prepared to go for your best friend. Would you really wear something which you absolutely hated, or looked awful in because the colour didn't suit you, was the wrong shape for your body......... just because the bride wanted you to!
I had the interesting job of trying to find bridesmaids dresses that would suit two twenty somethings, both extremely skinny, but one with a larger "chest" than the other, and my best friend who was twenty years older than the other two and rather larger all round. Not an easy task. We started off with trying to find a dress for the two younger ones, and perhaps trying to contrast a different style with the older bridesmaid (making her the Matron of Honour). This was extremely difficult as the styles and fabrics didn't quite work and they just looked like separate themes. By chance we found a high street shop that had their Xmas stock in and hanging on the rails was a strapless knee length ball gown. One by one they tried on the same dress, and amazingly all three looked fantastic - it suited all of them, despite the different shapes and size. Result when we least expected it.
So keep trying on dresses of differing styles, don't discount something until all of your bridesmaids have tried on the dress and visit several shops that may offer new ideas to you. |
