Hi guys!! Bit of a random post but I thought I'd share this with you guys some of you might be getting married who knows?! My mum has 2 Alfred Angelo bridesmaid dresses for sale on ebay, only one has ever been worn. Her description is a bit grim so I thought I'd help her out, I did help plan her wedding to my step dad and did loads of research into dress styles, materials appropriate for the weather, the cut and design etc. So I'm a bit of a wedding geek now you could say ha ha it's sad! Just a note about the picture on the left this was taken from the Alfred Angelo website and they have a tool where you can change the colour of any dress and this shade <---- is supposed to be eggplant but it looks really weird and fake. Just look at the pictures at the bottom to get a true colour match.
I'll put pictures up of the dresses themselves, a picture of me in the long dress and some pictures from the Alfred Angelo website to show the dresses on a model. The colour of both dresses is eggplant it is a dark purple some call it grape others call it royal purple it is a very beautiful and rich colour to suit pretty much any skin tone. I can vouch for this fact because I am ghostly pale I looked awesome if I do say so lol, my cousin who has naturally very tanned skin also looked amazing in it. I can also point out that it especially brings out blue and brown eyes.
The shorter dress is a cocktail length (never worn, not altered), totally gorgeous with a ruching to one side of the waist (left) and has 2 satin ties with beaded ends dangling from the pleating. The pleating, which features on both dresses, around the stomach area is very forgiving especially after a day of drinking champagne and eating a hell of alot! The dress length on me (5ft7) hits just below my knee and would be perfect for a late Spring/Summer wedding. This dress was bought for £175 also because of the extra detail it featured this also has a starting price of £25!
The floor length dress was altered to my measurements (details of those later) and I can honestly say it was a pleasure to wear. I have quite a difficult chest size to work with (36G) and with the help of my sturdy strapless bra (scaffolding ha ha) it supported me all throughout the extraordinarily long day and night basically from 8 in the morning until 4 the next morning!! It has a strapless bodice with an empire waistline and an A-line skirt. I wore this in August last year and felt comfortable and supported all the time and especially flattered around the waistline which helped! This dress was bought for £175, has only been worn once and the starting bid is £25 so grab a bargain people!
The material that both dresses are made from is a medium weight satin and the cocktail length dress has the spaghetti straps that can be sewn on by a dressmaker in any formation (standard straps, halterneck, cross back etc). Both dresses are lined and are very well constructed, as I said before the cocktail length has never been altered but the floor length was altered to fit me at the time. I don't have the measurements of the dresses now but I'm seeing my mum tomorrow and will measure them - bust size, under bust, waist size, approx hip size, length of dress in total and waist to hem length for both dresses. I'm not sure about the sizes but I think the floor length was a UK 20 on the label but was apparently an UK 18 really and then altered to fit me UK 18 top UK 16 waist etc. The cocktail length I think was a UK 16 it was bought for my mum to wear in the evening but she decided in the end not to change (wise move her dress was stunning!) but this dress could fit a 14 - UK 16 even a small UK 18 as I tried that on and had lots of room chest wise. It could be easily altered by a reputable dress maker down to a UK size 12 without compromising the cut and structure in the dress.
I have been a bridesmaid a total of 4 times in my 22 years and I have had various degrees of success with dresses:-
- 1988 - My mum and dad's wedding 4 bridesmaids in pink taffeta supposedly very cool at the time! In the pictures we all kind of look like Bo Peep looking for our candy pink coloured sheep!! I was 18 months at the time so I wasn't aware of the horrors I was being subjected to.
- 1998 - My aunties wedding, 3 bridesmaids (me and my two cousins) and the theme was forest green and gold! The dresses were made from a pretty light weight satin-silk mix (I'm such a geek to know all this!) The dress were an empire style and the top section in forest green covered my non-existent breasts and the gold a-line skirt was to the floor. The only particularly memorable thing is that the gold spiky leaves in the bouquet I was carrying kept poking me and that I completely trashed my 'very practical' cream satin ballet pumps running around a field at the reception.
- 2006 - My cousin's wedding (a bridesmaid from the previous wedding) and I was one of three bridesmaids again. The dresses were made from chiffon in a column style with no real structure. About 2 hours into the day the boning in my dress snapped! I was wearing a strapless bra (phew!) but I couldn't figure out how the hell the dress had just given up! I was slimmer then and the breasts were considerably more manageable. I will post a (blurry)picture of me in this as well in all its broken glory! So I spent an incredibly loooooong day pulling up my dress and being terrified of flashing! Not fun! So if your thinking of putting your bridesmaids in chiffon either don't, or get some industrial strength scaffolding (Fantasie or Freya strapless bra and Spanks!!! or just have bridesmaids that are less well endowed for modesty’s sake please!! Because nobody wants a group photo ruined by a fallen dress (my Aunty at my mum and step dads wedding had a nursing bra on and of course it made an appearance in quite a few photos - thank the lord for airbrushing!
- And finally the featured wedding 2008 - I can honestly say I had absolutely no problems with my dress apart from not wanting to take it off! I felt elegant, supported, my waist was defined and flattened and it was truly a beautiful thing to wear. I wanted to keep it but my mother insisted that we let someone else enjoy them. She likes the idea of selling to the actual person rather than a dress agency so she (via my step dads id- shes a total technophobe!) listed them and keeps checking every hour or so to see how many people are watching them!
Finally the pictures are :-
- me in the floor length dress
- the floor length dress on the Alfred Angelo website
- a picture of the cocktail length dress
- a picture of the floor length dress
- and a picture of me in the disastrous chiffon number!
I hope I've given enough information if you guys want to see any more pictures especially of the ruching or beading details just leave me a comment and I'll post some more for you. Oh by the way there are absolutely no marks on either of the dresses they are completely pristine just need a light steam to release some storage wrinkles. I will update this post tomorrow (Saturday) with the measurements of both dresses and the exact sizes that are on the labels, until then my lovelies enjoy!!!x x x
Just a quick p.s we are more than willing to post overseas I'm not sure when 'prom season' is but I had an inkling it was around late Spring. So please just ignore the really unhelpful and tragically bland ebay listing and just rely on the information here. We will also send by recorded delivery and special delivery and the international equivalents. Once again if you guys have any questions just leave a comment or contact us through the ebay messaging system.
Just follow the links to the dresses on ebay!
Cocktail length - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Alfred-Angelo-Bridesmaid-dress-Eggplant_W0QQitemZ180337820311QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Wedding_Clothing?hash=item180337820311&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1685%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318
Floor length - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180337527442#description
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