At All Costs - Dresses They Are

My budget for a wedding dress is small. Ideally, I want to spend around $500, but the more I look, I'm starting to wonder how much of a reality that is going to be.

Initially, I went to David's Bridal in search of a dress.  They post their prices online, so it was clear that if I made an appointment there, there would be a large number of dresses for me to try on.

However, after not falling in love with the dresses I tried on, I am starting to branch out to find other bridal salons in the area.  Most of these places are two-ish hours away, carry certain designers, but do not list their prices.  And thus we arrive at my issue (well, one of them!):  I have a huge fear of walking into a bridal salon and finding dresses only outside of my price range.

It's one of those situations that you wonder whether you should honor the appointment (since you drove all the way to get there!), try some on and potentially fall in love with something you can't buy, or face the music and tell your attendant that the dresses are outside of your budget.

I would like to avoid that situation all together.  Thus I present to you:

  

source

The Wedding Dress Designer Price Guide

Theknot.com has lots of wedding dresses organized by price category ($, $$, $$$, $$$$ and $$$$$).  

I went through the pages upon pages of dresses, wrote down the designers, and compiled them into a document that is, well, awesome.  The WDDPG fits any budget and runs from $0 - $5000+.  You can either look up the designer alphabetically to see the price range of their dresses, or you can look by price category and find designers that cater to your budget.

I am so happy I did this.  I had been looking at several bridal shops in the area and I really had no idea where to go.  With the WDDPG, I was able to pull up the designers that each shop carries, analyze the salons/designers, and figure out which one was going to carry the most affordable dresses for me.   

I will warn you though:  all of the information is from theknot.com.  While they seem to be a pretty reliable source, I feel like Kansas is different than other states when it comes to cost-of-living and living/wedding expenses.  

I second warn you:  I make mistakes.  I looked at over 2000 dresses.  However, you can just click on each designer in the WDDPG and it will take you to theknot's page of dresses and you can always double-check there.

I hope that if you are stuck like me, not wanting to inconvenience your friends and family with a wasted shopping trip, you can put this to use.  Good luck!