Wedding Blog

Okay, so now I will walk you through the rest of the bridal salons that I went to (all in the Chicago area) in the fifth installment of Miss Radish’s Adventures in Dress Shopping.

Saeyoung Vu Couture: I really loved the bridesmaids dresses at Saeyoung Vu but none of the wedding gowns really impressed me that much for the price. I tried on a bunch of dresses but the only picture I saved was of this chiffon dress. It had kind of an old Hollywood glam kind of like to it that made me look surprisingly busty, which is always thrilling for me as a 34B girl, BUT it was well over $3,000 and that’s just too rich for this radish.

Brides by Demetrios: This place was out in Schaumburg (Chicago suburb) but they wouldn’t let us take any pictures. I guess that’s okay because there wasn’t anything there that I was all that into anyway. The two dresses below were the only ones that I liked, and I felt that the prices were a little high for the quality of the gowns. The lace on the one gown, for example, was obviously machine made and felt stiff and itchy but it was still $2,200. Also, the bridal consultant that I worked with kept picking out the ugliest gowns for me to try on. She had no taste.

Veiled in Elegance: I came across this shop from an online review I read somewhere and I checked out their website. It’s all the way out in Geneva, IL but it seemed worth the trip because they carry some dresses by designers that I hadn’t seen at many other places. I was suspicious that their dresses were going to be very expensive, so when I called to make an appointment I asked what price range was. The woman I spoke with told me that they didn’t carry anything over $3,000, and most of their dresses were less than $2,000 and some were even under $1,000. PERFECT!!! So I made an appointment and ventured out to this distant suburb on a rainy February day and this is what I found…

First I tried on this beautiful Adele Wechsler gown but I didn’t get a picture of myself in it. It was a great dress, but it just didn’t look right on me. I loved the satin ribbons in the back and the floatiness of the skirt.

This next one is by Caroline DeVillo, who is actually a local Chicago designer with her own boutique in Wicker Park. You can’t really see it very well in this picture, but the bodice has a ruched polka dot lacey kind of material and a vintage-looking rhinestone brooch. Very nice and right around $2,000.

The next 4 dresses are all from Lambert Creations, a French design team that doesn’t advertise in America so I had never heard of them before. Apparently, Veiled in Elegance is the exclusive distributor of these dresses in the US. I think they sell them to about 3 other shops right now in the states. I really liked the whimsical, ethereal feeling of these dresses and they seemed a little more couture/high-fashion than most dresses in my price range. Also, the fabrics used in these are top notch. No cheap, itchy lace here.

Boutique Victoria: this is a small boutique in Chicago’s west loop owned and run by a very nice young lady… named Victoria (makes sense, right?). I forgot to bring my camera with me that day, but she does allow photographs to be taken. She had a small but well-selected collection of dresses in a variety of price ranges. She had the same beaded lace Casablanca gown that I tried on in Syracuse for $300 less. Here’s a couple of the dresses I tried on there from Jim Hjelm and La Sposa.

Alright, that’s it for my dress shopping adventures. In total, I went to about 10 different salons/boutiques and that was probably more than enough. At a certain point I just had to decide, especially since some of the dresses required at least a 6 month lead time for ordering and alterations. It was a lot harder than I thought to find a dress that I really loved for the amount that I wanted to spend (no more than $2,500… preferably less than $2,000), but I think I found some great options.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to see my top 5 dresses and which dress I picked!