Bridehood Revisited: The decline of civilization at $250 a plate

Because some things are just wrong...

In honor of Operation Pink Herring's engagement, here is a photoset of dresses that I'm personally opposed to.  My reasons are listed, though they didn't need to be.

Enjoy!

Target Bridal?

Bridal fashions at Target? Yes! Really! I know. I'm surprised. I have no idea what the quality is like. I'm sure the fit is pretty bad, though for a dress under $200 it would certainly be worth alterations. It probably won't disintegrate during the wedding, which is a good thing, especially since you should have no other occasions to wear a big white dress, and even if you think you do, you don't, really, you do not. They look cute enough. The bridesmaid dresses are generic and cheap, which your bridesmaids will thank you for. But who cares? The best, most wonderfully awesome quality of the Target bridal line is that they understand that strapless dresses look totally awful on most everyone and have created a bridal line where strapless is not the standard, and for that I almost want to kiss Isaac Mizrahi. Almost. Well, not really. Actually, no, not at all. But still, it is awesome!

The other sleeve to drop?

Where is the other sleeve? Why does she have a turtleneck? Is it cold? If she's cold, she should have another sleeve. Was she in a cat fight on her way to the ceremony?

Monique Lhuillier

One of my favorite wedding dress designers is Monique Lhuillier. I love some of her dresses. Love them. I almost love them enough to make me weep to my parents and throw a bridezilla hissy fit that I need them before I've even met the man of my dreams.

Well, not really. But I love them a lot.

This dress would look amazing on me, even though it is from several years ago.

Even though this dress looks a little wide (which is while I'll never wear it) I just love it. (And yes, Amsale has a similar dress.)

And this one, well, I love it, for no reason. I just love it.

I could probably even justify 11k on this bad boy

While I love Monique Lhuillier a great deal, I only love these dresses. Her other designs? They make me sad. They make me sad because a great and wonderful designer who designed the lovely frocks above has also designed the following, which I find unflattering, not women friendly at all (hello! boobies!) and just plain depressing.

Boobies? Where are we supposed to put you? You need a place to go... At least the dress incorporates an area for a very high third nipple. A nirple.

Boobies go up, not down. UP, I say!

This one looks like it's a brides greatest nightmare, having acid poured onto their dress so it begins to disintegrate.

This one looks just like I did playing dress up with my grandmother's clothing.

This is what would happen if I needed to make an entire gown in the clearance section of AC Moore. In 20 minutes.

This is similar to how my dress would look after it had been mauled by dogs.

Monique Lhuillier, please be consistent. Please make beautiful dresses. Not the ugly ones. Please.

Oh. No.

This heavy little frock should only be worn if you're giving out X-Rays as favors. Or if you're Katie Holmes and you want to protect the baby from the radiation exposure when the spaceship lands. 'Cause spaceships bring radiation. Of course they do.

(image courtesy of nymag.com)

Sausage.

No matter how much you may love sausage, you probably don't aspire to look like one on your wedding day. But I'm seeing a lot of sausages walk down the aisle. Many beautiful, healthy women crammed  into the dreaded and ubiquitous strapless white gown.  I know.  I know.  The white, strapless dress is the "in" thing right now, but cocaine was the "in" thing in the 80s and that wasn't very good for people either.  Don't give in to the peer pressure. Just say no!

Look, unless you plan on winning an Emmy, you'll probably have just one occasion in life to wear a beautiful white gown. So pick a gown that looks good on you! And the strapless gown is just not that flattering for most figure types. In fact, very few women, even the tallest and slimmest among us, can actually pull that look off. For most people it just makes you look short and stout, minus the handle and spout. And don't even think about that kind of dress if you are a full-figured gal -- there are so many better options. So please, for the love of God and the sake of your wedding pictures to be viewed by generations to come, when trying on dresses, please try on something that's not strapless. Have an open mind, look for a dress that flatters you, not necessarily for one that looks gorgeous on some waif model in a magazine. You'll thank me.

But you're still sighing over the latest Vera Wang/Reem Acra/Monique Lhuillier in your wedding magazine? Fine. I'll spell it out for you. The problem with the strapless gown is that all of the detail is horizontal - so it emphasizes width, not length. Take a piece of paper. Draw a line from one side to the other. Then look at a magazine, read a book or some phenomenal blog and then look back at the paper. What is your eye drawn to? The line. When you wear something strapless you're immediately attracting attention to your width. But a v-neck and sleeves -- that will draw the eye all the way down the body, not across. Down makes you looktall and skinny, across makes you look short and stout, with your height lost in the balance.

Still don't believe me?  Well then picture this. You know how when you cook good sausage that you had to cut at the links it plumps on the ends and the casing retreats a bit?  Not a bad look for a piece of luscious pork sausage.  But that's not a flattering fit for a human being. You know your boobies? They need to go inside the dress - every last bit. Your back fat needs to be contained as well. When a strapless dress (and you know, for that matter, anything strapless) isworn, in order for it to cover your nipples, it needs to be the one in charge of your boobs.  But if it needs to push anything out of the way in order to get control over the boobies, specifically that underarm fat thing attached to my boobs that I can't get rid of and have no idea what it's called so I'll call it arm-boob, then you get the squished out the top sausage look. Not pretty.

Still need convincing?  Look at this gorgeous model. She probably has a figure most women can never, ever aspire to. (Translation: itsy, bitsy, skinny wench.)  And yet even she looks bad in this dress.  It cuts her off and makes her look far wider than she probably is. Now, the waist is definitely a problem here, but having the line drawn across her chest doesn't help.

(image courtesy of nymag.com)

Here's another model done in by the strapless white gown -- so very skinny and sweet but check out the arm-boob action happening. This is bad. She has arm-boob and she's already jutting her chest out. Do you want to jut your chest out all day long? I didn't think so.

 

(image courtesy of David's Bridal)

Please don't look like sausage on your wedding day.

Unless you're marrying scrambled eggs.

Or peppers and onions.

What beautiful underclothes you have, my dear...

On your wedding day, you're most likely be wearing the most expensive outfit of your life. It's only right to purchase amazing undergarments that are comfortable and know just the right areas to squish and squash. Isn't the picture lovely? Beautiful hand detailed? Perfect boning, squishing and lifting. All very lovely. But this, my friends, is not underclothing. This is a dress. A nearly $19,000 wedding dress.

Someone spent 19 grand on this dress to look like they were wearing their underwear.

(image courtesy of nymag.com)

Lovely to Lewd

Dresses with corset backs can be beautiful. Can be beautiful. While they are very forgiving and allow those of us with nonstandard shapes to better accommodate our bodies, they can be grievously misused. Listen, it's kinda simple: there should be no fat poking through the back of a corset. Ever. And more importantly, the corset should never, ever, ever remind me of the 14 stitches my little brother got in his forehead from the time he skied into a tree. Love the corset, respect the corset, but please, please don't abuse it.

Oh the Poor, Mistaken, Frat Boys...

If you wear this gown, the poor frat boys are going to think you're going to their party, not yours...

(Image Courtesy of NYmetro.com)

Multipurpose Gown!

Wedding gowns are wickedly expensive. Even more so when you consider that you generally wear it for one-third of a whole day.

Alas, someone has solved this problem.

Beekeeping.

(picture courtesy of nymetro.com)

Not only will this lovely gown serve you well on your special day, you can wear it to harvest honey from your hives. And it works even better if you're in Africa: sleep in it and forget the netting around your bed. Woo hoo!