Bridesmaid Dress Ideas: The High Street

Images (clockwise from left)

Dresses by Oli, Whistles, Topshop, Monsoon & Topshop

Shoes by Dune

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By far and away my biggest challenge so far has been finding a solution to my bridesmaids outfits. For a bride with a large budget, not so much of a challenge. There are plenty of places where you can buy some beautiful and admittedly, some less than beautiful, dresses. But I do not want to spend hundreds per dress. We have a budget and from that budget the church and our reception venue were where we chose to spend. This means that there is a lower budget in other areas: not a problem, just somewhat of a challenge.

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I am having three adult bridesmaids - my two sisters and my sister-in-law-to-be. All three are quite tall (all taller than me) and all of them are curvier than me. I would like them to wear blue or green or a peacock-y colour and the dress must be fairly simple (as my own is). The budget I have at present is £50 per dress. I may be able to find more but I would be pleased if I didn't have to.

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I have posted before some designer options which I very much like but clearly they are way over budget. So I have instead scoured the high street and these dresses are the best that I can come up with. And yes, some of these are over budget too. Much as I like the colour of the Whistles dress, I do not think it works: it is too short and too tailored and I do not think it will complement my dress. Unfortunately the Oli one on the left is sold out, as I think it is the nicest shape of the whole lot.

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The Monsoon one on the right is very close to the colour shoes I am going to be wearing and will match the ribbons I hope to tie round the bouquets* (I don't care whether it is supposed to be bad luck, I am looking forward to doing my own flowers...).

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Shoes wise I think I am going to leave the girls to pick their own. I cannot decide if they too should wear blue, or whether they should be the exact opposite to me and wear white/silver shoes with a blue dress. I love these Dune ones (full marks to anyone who recognises which recent bride wore these herself but in a different colour) but I think they are too high - I don't want the bridesmaids overshadowing me too much!

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Of course, the other option is to make the dresses, based on a pattern of a dress of my choice. Given that one sister can make her own clothes and sister-in-law-to-be is a fashion designer, perhaps that would be the obvious choice. But I saw how stressful that process was last year when I helped make my own bridesmaid dress for sister-in-law-to-be's wedding and I just don't know if I can willingly do that to myself. We shall see...

*which will be, I think, white roses like my own bouquet but a smaller bunch with shorter stems.

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