Weddingbee Blog

I knew pretty much from the beginning that shopping for a dress was gonna be tricky for me. After all, a bride needs that person or that group of people who will tell her, straight up, that that dress she loves so much in the magazine “just looks, well, horrible on you.” I wasn’t going to have that. All of my people were on another continent. I’d send my mom and my sister pictures of dresses I liked and in return I would receive a noncommittal “It’s pretty, but I’d have to see it on you.” Good point. I needed to get up close and personal with these dresses. I needed to try them on. But try googling Monique Lhuillier and you’ll discover that she isn’t sold here in Singapore.

Melissa Sweet? Nope.

Amsale? Christos? Lazaro? Oscar? Nada.

What about Vera? Someone’s got to be selling Vera. OK, there is one shop here that sells Vera and Reem Arca, and I think one more that sells Jim Hjelm. Other than that, Singapore doesn’t have a single shop that sells any of the designers found on The Knot. Tricky was becoming trickier. What was a bride in Singapore to do?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Weddings are big business here and wedding boutiques have taken that business to new and creative heights. It’s my understanding that most Singaporean brides often opt for up to four dresses - the traditional “white dress”, a cheongsam, a dress for the Registry of Marriage, and sometimes an evening dress for the reception. These dresses can be made to measure or off the rack and can be either rented or bought. There are quite a few very talented designers here that will work with a bride to create the dress of her dreams. More than that, many boutiques offer “bridal packages” which include things like designing gowns for all the girls (moms, flower girls, and bridesmaids), made to measure suits for the boys, hair and makeup, photography, videography, and flowers. Not only was I relieved, I was impressed.

I began to formulate a plan. Plan A, my personal preference, would involve having that “This Is The Dress” moment with my mom and sister over Christmas. This plan had a few obvious drawbacks. I would have two, maybe three days tops to devote to dress shopping. I knew I had something very specific in mind and the chances that I was going to find it in that amount of time were pretty slim. I also knew that time was not on my side. Ordering a dress in the United States, 5 months out from the date was cutting it pretty close. Or so I’ve been told. And if I didn’t find a dress then at least I would know what looked good on me and what didn’t and I could use that information.

Plan B involved finding a designer here in Singapore to work with and design my dress. Easy enough. Everyone I contacted was super friendly and helpful, but it didn’t take me very long to choose a designer. Michelle HuiMin’s designs are clean, classic, elegant and beautifully tailored. She works with each bride to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative so that the dress flatters the bride in every possible way. She uses real Swarovski crystals on some of her dresses for a really stunning effect. Plus, she is super nice.

All photos are Michelle HuiMin Designs for Bridal Veil

And the two that really sold me…

Her right hand man, Colin, explained that if I chose to work with Bridal Veil, that I’d meet with Michelle in February to begin the design process. A few weeks later we’d meet again to go over the design she’d come up with, followed by a mock up in muslin before construction began on the actual gown. Time frame wise he said that they like to take 2 - 3 months to construct a dress, cutting it as close to the wedding date as possible, but that they’d made dresses in as little time as two weeks before.

So, either I was going to find my dress in the US, in which case it would be coming in right about the time I was coming home, or I was going to have it designed here, which meant that I would be delaying my return to the States by about a month. That was the plan. All that I had to do was wait.