Dimitra Designs

Shopping for your bridal gown should be a wonderful time during your engagement. There’s nothing quite like the thrill and delight of trying on the perfect gown for the first time. At Dimitra Designs, we’re lucky enough to get to share that experience with you. We’ve seen the highs and the lows that can come with wedding dress shopping. It’s natural for many brides to be nervous, and even feel overwhelmed at the process. But it doesn’t have to be that way! If you take some time to plan out the experience, you’ll have a wonderful time!

• Dress appropriately. Wear comfortable clothes that are easy to take on and off. Also, choose a good set of support/shape wear for the day. It doesn’t have to be exactly what you’ll wear on your wedding day, but a good bra is a must for you to really see how the dress is supposed to fit.
• Bring your nearest and dearest. It’s helpful to have a few people with you while you try on dresses, but know when to limit yourself. If you’re not used to the limelight, you might find yourself overwhelmed with your entire bridal party watching you. Choose just 2 or 3 trusted friends and family members to help you.
• Bring a list. You’ve been eyeing up bridal gowns for months, so start writing down your favorites! If you have a list, call the salon ahead to find out what lines they carry. You can remove the ones they don’t and double check the lines they do carry to see if there’s anything else you’d like to see.
• Be adventurous. Maybe you’re convinced that an A-line strapless gown with a chapel length train is the way to go. But if the consultant suggests you try a trumpet gown, or even a short gown, go for it! You might be surprised at how much you like some of them.

What advice do other brides have for first time dress shoppers?

While we know there’s nothing more romantic than a wedding, the planning of said wedding can turn into a lot of stress! Even the most well balanced bride and groom may find themselves overwhelmed with wedding planning on top of their daily grind. That’s why it’s so important for engaged couples to make some time for each other during the planning process.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and it’s the perfect excuse to schedule some couple time. No wedding talk, no color palates or flower choices – just you and your honey spending some quality time together!

It’s so important to make the time to connect, both to de-stress and to remind yourselves of why you’re getting married in the first place. It makes the time you do spend planning so much more enjoyable. If you’re not sure what to do this Valentine’s Day, you could make some time for any of the following:

• Dinner and a movie

• Dancing out at your favorite club

• A night out at a hockey game (or your sport of choice)

• A couple’s massage

• Cooking at home together and a night spent cuddling on the couch

It really doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you focus on each other! We hope all of our brides and grooms have a wonderful Valentine’s Day this year!

We are so very, very excited about today’s post. If you’re in the South Carolina area like us, you’ve probably seen the wonderful morning show Your Carolina with Jack & Kimberley. Last week, they launched their latest contest: Get Engaged Live On Stage! One lucky girl is going to get the proposal of a life time right on the Your Carolina set:

Why are we so excited about this? Not just because we love weddings and proposal stories, but because we’re sponsoring part of the giveaway! If you’re ready to take the plunge and ask the woman of your dreams to spend the rest of her life with you, AND are willing to do all of that on tv, that lucky lady will win the wedding dress of her dreams from Dimitra Designs!

So guys,  now is your chance to get engaged and win some fabulous prizes. Let Your Carolina and Dimitra Designs help you create the wedding of your dreams. You have until February 9th to enter!

Besides choosing your wedding dress, one of the most fun parts of planning for your wedding day is choosing the accessories that go with your gown. On the top of that list is the bridal headpiece. If you just started planning for your wedding, or haven’t been in a wedding in a few years, you might not have realized how many options are out there for brides today!

Veils – the traditional wedding headpiece, the bridal veil comes in a wide variety of styles. For more formal weddings, a cathedral length veil adorned with crystals or lace will create a dramatic look. There are also shorter, arm length veils and even the ever trendy birdcage veil.

Tiaras – Often paired with a veil, the tiara is perfect for brides looking to have an elegant, fairy tale wedding. They come in small, delicate styles as well as full, glittering options. If you want to have some extra bling at your wedding, or if you’re looking for an option that won’t weigh you down like a veil could. Tiaras are n excellent choice.

Hair Flowers/Fascinators – A newer, but very popular option is to use an over-sized flower or feather headpiece. These modern and trendy styles look great during summer and casual weddings, and are especially chic with short dress brides.

What kind of headpiece are you planning on wearing for your wedding?

When you think of champagne, or “the bubbly”, we’re thinking that you’re imagining celebrations and fun, festive get-togethers – perhaps a wedding? Bridal Bubbly is a wedding blog we recently came across, and oh how we love it! The lovely writer of the blog, Laura, is also the face behind Engaging Affairs, a Virginia wedding planning business with a website we absolutely adore!

We love her posts, too – they’re full of cheer and laughter, and we get such a upbeat vibe after checking out her blog! We hope Bridal Bubbly keeps up the wonderful posts, and we’re toasting to a great future for Engaging Affairs!

Is this your dream dress?

With so many new brides ready to start planning their weddings, the first few months of the year can be an absolute frenzy of activity for bridal salons. We love meeting all the new brides and have a lot of fun helping them find their dream dress.

Whether you’ve been dreaming of your wedding dress for years, or you have no idea what you want to look like on your big day, we have some tips that can help ease the process of dress shopping and help you find the right look for your big day.

- What’s your everyday style? Look at your current wardrobe. If you like to dress up, maybe a full ballgown would be more your style. But if you spend most of your free time in sweatpants and flip flops, look for a dress that’s comfortable as well as fashionable.

- What’s your budget? Try to have a rough idea of what you’d like to spend before you go shopping. Consultants will ask, as there are so many dresses at every price point. The last thing you want to do is fall head over heels in love with a dress you can’t afford!

- What’s your body type? Different dress cuts will look better on different body types. Find dresses you already own that look great on you and use them as a starting point. You should also consider trying on dresses in different cuts as a test. You might be surprised to find a dress you hadn’t considered actually looks amazing on you!

Finally, remember to have fun when you’re dress shopping. Bring your best gal pals and relax!

We just can’t get enough of everything wedding-related, so we’re always reading wedding blogs and wedding magazines. BrideTide.com is one of our favorite wedding sites, as it keeps us up to date on posts from other wedding blogs and even allows us to cast our “up or down” vote on each article! We’re busy bees around here, so having one site we can go to and stay up to date on all our wedding news and wedding blog posts is such a help.

We hope you’ll visit BrideTide.com, it’s such a great wedding resource! Feel free to submit our posts if you’d like

Stay Warm In A Satin & Lace Dress By Mori Lee

Winter is traditionally a slow season in the wedding industry, but we absolutely love winter weddings! Despite the occasional weather concern, there’s something very elegant about a wedding in the cold of winter. Let the season inspire you with some of our favorite winter wedding trends:

• Heavier fabrics – certain heavy satins and silks might weigh you down in the summer months, but you’ll appreciate the extra warmth in winter.

• Winter Wonderland – skip the cheese and create a glittering nighttime gala with sparkling accents. Use a white and silver color scheme with just a touch of blue to create a look that’s breath taking.

• Comfort Foods – Create a warm and inviting menu with some classic winter comfort foods and drinks, like spiced cider, delicious soups or heavenly whipped potatoes. Just make sure to only pick one or two heavier dishes so your guests aren’t sluggish and weighed down.

• Use candles – nothing creates a warm, comfortable glow like candles. Place a handful of votives on each table and watch the candle light create sparkle and shine as it plays off the rest of your décor!

December is one of the most popular months to get engaged, and chances are if you’re reading this you’re newly engaged yourself! Once the initial glow has worn off and you’ve celebrated with all your nearest and dearest, you might find yourself at a standstill. What to do next? Once you dip your toe into the wedding pool, you quickly realize how overloaded with “stuff” it can be and how quickly you can become overwhelmed.

Before you panic, remember that this is a joyful time! With a little bit of planning, you can make wedding planning a wonderful and memorable experience for your whole family. So let’s get started:

1. Dream. You and your finance should each sit down and describe your dream wedding. What matters the most to each of you? What season do you see it happening in? What are you wearing? Sketch out everything you’d like your wedding to be and you’ll start to see what’s important to both of you, only one of you, or neither of you. If you have strong opinions on music and he’s picky about location, you can delegate those tasks to each other. Use these sessions to guide you through the rest of your planning process.

2. Talk budget. How much can the two of you reasonably spend on your big day? It helps to determine your own budget, then factor in what family might be willing to contribute. Figure this out early to avoid disappointment later.

3. Invest in a planner. Every bride should have some sort of organizational system. There pre-made wedding planners along with file folders, online tools and more to help you keep track of your progress. Keep everything stored together so you don’t lose contracts or other important documents.

4. Go shopping! Wedding planning can be stressful, but it should also be fun! Have a girls day and go wedding dress shopping, then have lunch. Spend time with your parents browsing through magazines and show them your ideas. Savor each moment!

We love hearing proposal stories! Asking your sweetie to marry you is romantic any time of the year, but there’s something extra special about a Christmas proposal that we can’t get enough of. If you’re planning on getting engaged in the next few weeks, we wanted to share a few of our favorite ways of proposing during the holidays!

• Find a unique way to wrap your extra special Christmas gift! You can tuck it in the bottom of her Christmas stocking, or put it inside box after box and make her work for her present. You could even put it inside a giant box and then fill the rest of the box with tinsel or packing peanuts so she has to search for the ring.

• Ask her with lights. One of our co-workers recently asked his girlfriend to marry him in the cutest way. She took her family to a local park that does a walk through holiday light display. He was waiting near the end with his own light display that said “Will you marry me?” and completely surprised her! You can do the same thing at your local park, on your house, or even in the back yard.

• Hide the ring in your tree, or place it strategically when she’s decorating so that she stumbles across it, and then propose in front of the tree.

What are some of your favorite holiday proposals? Let us know in the comments and we’ll share the best ones!