Simple Cheap Wedding Dresses
Summary: My Aunt Antonia is very budget conscious.  I call her my aunt but she is really only two years older than me.  She was born about twenty years after her closest sister they call her a change of life baby. Anyways, she and I were brought up close together.  We did everything together as children, we played together fought together, and when she got engaged we planned her wedding together.

We were both in our early twenties so we didn’t have a lot of money.  Her fiancée also did not have a lot of extra cash to spend, so they decided they would have a small house ceremony and keep the number of guests to the absolute minimum. Her dress budget was similarly minimal.  If she could have made her dress out of old satin curtains I think she would have, but neither she nor I had any sort of skill in dressmaking.  The option then, was to ensure that she found a good deal on a premade wedding dress.

A few options we discarded early on included: buying a pre-owned wedding dress, and purchasing a designer label dress.  With regards to the pre-owned dress she did not think she wanted to go to the trouble of getting it cleaned and possibly altered, and with a designer label dress she did not feel she would be able to afford the price.

She also cut out some of the accessories that come in the standard formal wedding; she did not want a train, she did not purchase gloves, she looked at veils but could not justify the price, she avoided anything with extra amounts of lace, and her accessories only consisted of a simple headpiece and her engagement ring.

We went shopping for the special occasion about two months before it was to be held.  The invitations had already gone out stating that the wedding was to be an informal but elegant afternoon affair with an evening reception.

Our shopping expedition consisted of visiting various discount stores for clearance products.  We must have gone to over twenty stores; trying on over ten dresses in each store.  She kept a list of all the stores with their dress styles and price.  After an entire day of dress trying on she had not bought one.  When I brought it up, she said she wanted to sleep on it.

I know I would not have enough restraint to wait on deciding my favourite dress, but she was not me for sure.  She actually waited a whole week, combing through her dress, and calling different stores to see what type of sales they had ongoing.  After the week she called one store who had new stock on discount and she went to see what they moved over.

As luck would have it, the dress that was her second choice was on for over half off.  She immediately purchased it, bargaining a deal for the local dressmakers alterations as well.  Her wedding was small and simple but one of great memories.