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Do you need a dress? (Do you have $5000?)
Date of Review: May 3, 2000
I was engaged on December 31, 1999. On January 5, 2000, I bought my first ?bridal magazine.? Being the modern kinda girl that I am, I decided to choose Modern Bride over other choices such as Bride?s and Bride Guide. Actually, that is the extent of bridal magazines that is offered to me in Punxsutawney, PA. Being a very poor college student, I decided that, for the time being, Modern Bride would be my sole purchase.
After running (well, actually driving) home and ripping into that plastic wrapper I finally held in my hands about five pounds of shiny, smooth, beautiful pages filled with things that I thought would help me with my wedding plans. I remember thinking that I would buy a new one every two months (that?s how often they come out) and each one would be ragged from me flipping through and dog-earing pages and ripping things out, etcetera.
I am now the proud owner of two MINT CONDITION Modern Bride magazines and one Bride?s magazine. (After flipping through the most recent version of Bride?s from the Library?s collection, I realized that there were at least 20 pages of either dresses or ?articles? that I would like to tear out. I figured this made it worth the $4.75 [discounted price] to just purchase the magazine. More about this later.) None of these magazines are disfigured in any way. It is impossible to make the pages all raggedy because you cannot flip through this like you can a ?normal? magazine. It takes nearly an hour to do so. After all that, there?s probably something else in your life that you need to do and so it doesn?t really get flipped through all that much in that sense.
However, it does get flipped through in trying to find ?this beautiful dress in here!? It just keeps happening. I find this most beautiful dress, but of course only about 26 random pages in the magazine are numbered, so I have to figure out where it is by logical deduction. ?OK, I know it was around the middle. Oh, wait. It was before this ad for the million-dollar-a-setting china. ? If you?re lucky, you?ll find it in under five minutes. Maybe they should make it an Olympic sport.
Anyway, back to the content?there is very little worthwhile content in this magazine, although I do need to qualify this statement?.If you are just starting to plan and have no idea what you want, this is a good resource to get IDEAS. On the other hand, if you?ve been planning for months and have specific things in mind, this may not be the thing for you. It is still nice to have one, though because there are usually a ?few? things of value in each issue.
For example, I remember ripping out a page of ?good wedding songs? out of one of these magazines (I?m not sure which bridal magazine it was, but it really doesn?t matter. All of them probably have something such as this once in a while). Some of the random background things that aren?t even focused upon in the article might also be helpful to you. For example, I know what I would like my bouquet to look like. Or at least, I?d know it if I saw it (I couldn?t describe it). In one of these magazines, there was a bouquet just sort of lying in the background, but it was perfect.
Finally, there are TONS of dresses. This magazine averages to be about 600-800 pages long. In a 600 page magazine, I?d guess that 450 of the pages are just dresses. There?s about another 100 of other advertisements for China, Invitations, Favors, and other things. And there are about 50 pages of ?articles.?
Back to the dresses?if you don?t find a dress in here that you even remotely like, you might have to make your own, because there are so many styles in here, it is ridiculous. Don?t get your hopes too set on THAT dress though. I found a beautiful dress in several issues of these magazines and upon emailing an internet company which carried it, I found out that it was $850 through them. So if I ever find it in a store, it?s probably going to cost me between $700 and $1000. $700 might be OK for this most beautiful dress, but $1000 may be getting a little out of my league. I may have to go looking for something similar.
My point here is that even though people say "when you see the dress for you, you will know," don?t get your hopes too high if you saw it in this magazine first. Unless you have $1000-$5000 to shell out on a chunk of silk and tulle, it is best to get ideas of what you?re looking for then take your magazine to a bridal store and show them. Most likely, they will have something very similar, but in your price range. On the other hand, if you are dead-set on a dress in one of these magazines, and can afford it, don?t rip out the page. Since most of the pages aren?t numbered, the store will need the whole magazine to look up the dress. (I read this somewhere, though I?m not sure where)
My tip for saving money on these magazines? Go to the library and flip through one. If you find a lot of pages that you would rip out if it were your own magazine, go ahead and buy it. If you only found one or two things, photocopy them and move on.
Now wish me luck on this wedding planning stuff! All these magazines for the $50,000 a year and up set aren?t getting me too far (try $5,000 a year!). A wedding on a budget that costs $30,000 is NOT a wedding on a budget, unless you have 3,000 guests!
Thanks for reading!! I?d love to hear your comments.
