Costs – How long is a piece of string?

To answer this question is extremely difficult and I suggest that the only way to get a first “ball park” figure is to speak directly to your designer / dressmaker. I have, however, attempted below to set out some of the factors that govern the costs involved in the making of a made to measure gown.

The costs involved in the making of your outfit / wedding gown will vary sometimes quite enormously depending on your choice of style and fabric. The other things that add to the costs are details such as beading, covered buttons and rouleau loops, embroidery, appliqué etc. and if any of these are hand worked the price will increase again. What seems simple to you may possibly be bordering on the impossible to your dressmaker. A classic example of this is “that little bias cut number”. This is absolutely fine until you decide on using a silk velvet devoré with a silk satin backed crêpe underslip and some beading around the neckline.

Firstly all the fabrics involved are exquisite but expensive. Secondly, for a variety of reasons, they are not the easiest fabrics in the world to handle and are therefore time consuming and thirdly the beading around the neckline would have to be hand applied and this too is time consuming. Another example that always increases the price of a dress is a corseted bodice. They look absolutely stunning but they are very time consuming. Different designers have different pricing structures but I think it is fair to say that if your budget is, say,  £650 then a made to measure wedding gown is not necessarily going to be an easy choice for you. Equally if the estimated cost of your made to measure gown is over £3,000 you would expect that a great deal of work has gone into your gown in terms of design, cut, fabric and detail.

Pricing a dress accurately is impossible without a basic idea of the style, cut and choice of fabric and if a designer quotes you a price that has you reaching for the brandy bottle, don’t faint, ASK WHY! If you don’t, you won’t ever find out what it is about your dream dress that is causing the price hike and once you know you can consider something else that wouldn’t work out as expensive to make up. I hope this is of some help to you, I realise it is very frustrating not to be able to see a chart on this page containing a list of styles and prices but it is honestly quite impossible to do this when there are so many variables. As I have said earlier in this site, once drawings and an idea of fabrics are known, pricing your dream dress becomes much easier.