How Stress Affects Your Wedding Dress Alterations, And Why You Should Wait
Planning a wedding is super-stressful. In fact, on the list of life's most stressful events, it ranks right up there with moving, having a baby, and surviving your spouse's death. In the midst of all this, you ladies have to find time to alter your wedding dresses so that they fit properly on the big day. Who came up with that?
If you are not stuffing your face with comfort food because you are stressed out, you are not really eating anything at all because you are too worn out to think about food. Your dress measurements are all over the place in the course of a year, and every time your dress is altered to fit the current you, you have to have it altered again to fit the future you. Then you have to keep paying your seamstress or tailor to alter your dress again. STOP. Do the following instead.
Wait Until Four Months Before the Wedding
Unless you are hiring the Vera Wang to alter your dress, you can wait until about four months before the wedding. Then make an appointment with a seamstress or tailor to alter your dress. In most cases where wedding dress alterations are needed, and you do not live in a place like L.A. or New York City, four months in advance is enough time to schedule your first alteration appointment.
Schedule Your First Fitting Three Months Before
When you call the seamstress/tailor four months before the big day, schedule your first fitting about three months before the wedding. By this point and time, all of the binging and not eating should be balancing out because all of the major planning is complete. Your remaining stress is less than it was, and you are starting to calm down as the days begin to count down to your ceremony. Your wedding dress alterations person can take your measurements, find where the dress needs to be taken in or let out, pin the areas that need to be altered, and then you can leave the dress with him/her.
Schedule Your Second Fitting with Two Months to Go
Yes, it may feel a little hectic now, but at two months to go, it is nearly impossible for you to get too big again for your newly-altered dress. (Usually, the only time this happens is if the bride is pregnant, and the dress needs to be altered again to fit the size of her abdomen.) If you get thinner, there are always things you can do to fill out the dress to avoid more alterations. If you get heavier, well, the dress will need to be altered again.
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