Weddingbee Blog

This summer I stumbled upon a small, unassuming bridal shop called Vancouver Bridals that I believe still bore the signage of the previous clothing boutique and was not technically open at the time. It looks like the Macdonald and Broadway area of Kitsilano is slowly getting wedding fever - there’s another bridal shop that opened up across the street, Bride to Be, and along with cupcakes, the sleek new flower shop a block down, the long-time floral fixtures of the neighbourhood and Frocks up the road at Arbutus - it’s certainly becoming a bit of a bridal frenzy.

A courteous Asian man named Billy Bi was happy to have me browse around at their samples, and then I realized with much glee that he would soon be stocking Simone Carvalli which isn’t carried anywhere in the northwest nevermind Seattle and Vancouver.

These are the dresses that really stand out amongst the hundreds of ads in the magazines. Simone Carvalli makes the mermaid of mermaid dresses - I think I saw a new one in Nartha’s summer wedding issue. Carvalli’s dresses look so gorgeous I briefly considered flying to some nearby state to try some on. Even the poofy ones look so beautifully tactile. they’ll also be carrying pronovias and palmona blanca

**note I haven’t been back there since the summer so I don’t know the current state of the shop…

My bridesmaid hunted me down that day and I managed to get her into the store to breathe life into the bridesmaid dresses. They’re made in-house and so they run a very palatable $160 a piece (recall all other bridesmaid dresses have been $300-400 simply because you can get them in hot pink and all colors of the rainbow). They were slightly ill-fitting, but perhaps alterations could do wonders?

Okay so orange is definitely out of the question.

Although this “little black dress” was umpteen sizes too big and much too long, this was when I first started to take a shine to black (although I believe this was a dark, dark navy).

And then I realized just how similar these dresses were to the Melissa Sweet ones:

Across the street, a bridal store had relocated to Kitsilano called Bride to Be on Broadway near Macdonald. Despite the fact that the photos on the website don’t necessarily reflect exactly what they have in stock, what they do offer is each dress in several different sizes. I was actually able to try some dresses on that were a size 4 (compared to the size 10-12 I usually get clamped into).

Here are two Casablanca dresses that I briefly highlighted in an earlier post. They were pretty decent, dress #1814 (spring2006!!!??) for $1300 CA and #1881 (fall2007) for $1260 CA. Not only does the store boast several sizes of their sample dresses, but alterations are included. These dresses weren’t all that different than the high end $4000+ dresses, and not even Melissa Sweet nor Birnbaum & Bullock use material that exquisitely mimics vera wang’s lightweight silk shantung on her $10G+ gowns. Casablanca also seems to have a lot of lacey-sleevy dresses from what I’ve seen of their website, also a bit of a rarity in this day and age of “sleeveless” wedding dresses.