Picking the Right Wedding Dress For a Destination Wedding

Q: I’m having a destination wedding on the beach and everyone is sharing all these floaty, ethereal or Grecian looking dresses with me. While they are beautiful, they just kinda aren’t my thing. Do I have to pick a wedding dress that is “beachy”? How do I pick the right wedding dress for my destination wedding?

I love this question! And I’ve gotten it many times, so you’re not alone. Another version of this question that I get from brides is, does my wedding dress need to match my venue? The answer to your question about whether your wedding dress needs to beachy (and if it needs to match your venue) is a resounding NO!

Don’t feel pressured to force your wedding dress decision to match your destination location, your venue, your fiancé, your colors or anything really but, yourself. You want to feel beautiful in your dress, so pick one that you love regardless of everything else.

So, how do you pick the right wedding dress for your destination wedding? Start with what you like and read this past post about how to start looking for a wedding dress. Once you’ve started to look, picking the right wedding dress for a destination wedding is a combination of having that intangible I-feel-beautiful-and-look-awesome feeling along with whether it hits the destination requirements.

The destination requirements will vary by every couple and every destination, but here are the general items you’ll want to think about:

1. Weather – Are you going somewhere hot? Or cold? Humid? Rainy? You may want to pick a dress that works well with the weather so you aren’t shivering or sweating to death. You want to be comfortable in whatever way that means for you. You’ll also want to take into account how your body runs and if you tend to be cold or hot.

2. Travel – Will this dress be hard to travel with? Most dresses won’t be that simple to travel with and you’ll have at least a normal size garment bag, but some wedding dresses are larger, have trains or wrinkle easily. It depends on how much you care about those things, but it’s something to consider.

3. Location – Ok, so I know I said you don’t have to pick a dress to match your destination location and that is still true. But, it’s still something to consider if your dress totally contradicts with your location. For example, let’s say you’re getting married in the forest which means a wet leafy ground and you don’t want to get your wedding dress dirty. Then picking a ball gown with a long train isn’t going to be the best idea. But, if you love a ball gown and don’t care about it getting dirty, then go for it! See what I mean? You just want to make sure what you want and where you are having your wedding don’t contradict each other because we’re going for happy here.

You’ll want to think through your destination requirements and how you feel about each of them before you assess the wedding dresses you’re considering. But, armed with this info and how you innately feel about the wedding dress, you’ll know how to pick the right wedding dress for your destination wedding.