Bridal Zone has shop at Marina Square, but the photo studio and gown show house is located in their Boon Keng Branch. To avoid the weekend rush at the bridal shop, we scheduled weekday evenings after work to pick the gowns.

1st selection day: 15th April 2008

Wanted to ask the jiemeis along to give their opinions on the dresses, instead of having only darling’s vote on them. =P But alas! Clare was going to India for her medical attachment soon and wun be back till mid-June. Thankfully managed to schedule a good time, barely few days before Clare left for India! So FM, me and Clare went down to pick the first gowns!

Agenda: White wedding gowns

Never changed so many gowns continuously before! A little tedious… but pretty fun! The lady Ling Ling was really helpful in helping to select dresses for me to try. I was impressed at how she remembers all the dresses on the rack! Gave a rough description of what I had in mind, and immediately she took out the relevant dress they had! Glad that they had a dress that I was specifically looking for: A white wedding gown with some striking red contrast. Perfect!

BZ allowed us to take pictures of the gowns, so I have a nice record of all the dresses I tried! The pictures were especially useful to refer back, when we were doing the painful final selection of the dresses back at home with my parents.

One thing though: I was only choosing gowns for the photoshoot, and will choose gowns again for my AD a year later, I was only allowed to choose the gowns of the “used” rack, and not from the “new” rack that had dresses unworn or only worn once/twice. well, I guess it made sense, but limited my selection pool for the album. Thankfully I did find nice ones which I liked with no problems!

At the end of the first evening: 2 wedding gowns chosen!

1. Red + white wedding gown for indoor studio shots. Nice bright red contrast and pretty tails!

2. Elegant white halter. Love the cut, and beautiful long and flowing train!

2nd selection day: 23rd April 2008

Settled on a day good for everyone – My other 2 jiemeis Min Zhi and Lin Chieh, and the 2 of us – to pick the rest of the dresses.

To pick: Another white wedding gown for outdoor shoot, and an evening gown for indoor studio shots.

Started off with the evening gowns. This was a tough one. One limitation of Bridal Zone was that they had a very limited evening gown selection on the “used” rack. I’m sure that they have plenty more evening gowns for the AD, but again, I wasn’t allowed to choose from the “new” rack until next year. Hmm…

Tried on a staggering TWELVE evening gowns, before finally shortlisting a few to keep in mind. Decided to leave that till later to review, see the pics, and discuss with parents/friends before choosing one. (Finally, after thinking about it for a week or two, I decided on the dark purple one. )

Also tried on a few more wedding gowns. Many of BZ’s wedding gowns look really pretty, I must say. Found a few nice ones. Eventually settled on the off-shoulder one after couple of weeks of deliberation. This dress had a really nice train, the off-shoulder cut adds variety in my gowns, and it was allowed for outdoor photoshoot! (Some of the gowns are only allowed for indoor shoot, not outdoor to run in the grub, sand and seawater. Heh.)

Pleased with all my gowns, and many thanks to Ling Ling for all her help!