Lasara, my dress! The photos below are some other Watters dresses I tried on. All photos from Watters.
When I ordered my dress at S2 Bridal, the girl took my measurements to figure out what size dress to order. This was its own little puzzle! The dress was going to be too long when it came; I’m 5’3″, I knew that going in. It was the rest of the measurements that were awkward.
Watters’ size chart starts at 33″ in the bust. My bust was… less than that. By more than an inch. My hips are 37″ – I’m pretty sure Watters called that a size 4 or a 6. I wasn’t too concerned, because my dress is free in the hips. The girl measured my waist a few times to see if the measurement changed, but it kept coming up as 25.5″. That was the sticky part – Watters sizes are in whole inches. That meant I could order a size 0 if I had a 25″ waist, or a size 2 if I had a 26″ waist. What to do if you’re in between?
Watters Delicias – the top was nice, but I wanted a less-plain skirt. And there’s a wee little bow in the back that I didn’t like for whatever reason.
The girl in the store said it was up to me to decide – I guess so I couldn’t blame them if I made the wrong choice. I tried to think about how Watters would compile their size chart – is 25″‘ the actual waist of the dress, or the size of someone who would fit in it? Even in something like a wedding gown, you will have a little bit of ease. If your garment’s waist measurement is 25″, a 25″-waisted person will not necessarily fit.
I thought about ordering the 0 and hoping I’d fit in it. I thought about the 2. 0. 2. 0. 2.
In the end I bit the bullet, and ordered the 2. My reasoning was that the dress was going to need to be altered anyway, because of my off-the-charts bust (not off the charts in the Pamela Anderson way, the opposite way!), and it is always easier to take in a larger dress than it is to let out a too-small dress. Cinnamaid A also mentioned that it would allow me to put on stress weight! Also – I may have a small bust, but my ribs are quite large for my size, if finding bras and shirts that fit in both places is anything to go by. I blame it on my French horn-playing years. My ribs are somewhere where I physically can’t lose any inches, short of removing bones. And I need those!
Watters Reynosa – I tried this but couldn’t get over the fact I thought I looked fuzzy (like a Muppet!) from far away.
I have to admit that one of the things that helped me make the final decision to buy Lasara in the first place was that my friend J, who works as Dresser/Wardrobe Mistress at a theatre I work for fairly often, offered to do the alterations on my dress. She did make the offer sometime after midnight at the bar we went to to celebrate our latest opening night, but when I brought it up the next day she still seemed keen! That took off some of the weight of ‘I’m buying a really expensive dress, and alterations are going to be EVEN MORE!!’. At least this way I can cross the ‘EVEN MORE’ off our budget, although I think I may try to pay J something, if she’ll take it, especially if the dress needs more than just hemming. I’m a teensy bit worried she might think she’s getting an invite to the wedding just because of the dress thing, but she’s been on the list since we made it in June!
Watters Sabine – pretty, but by this time I had my heart set on flowers.
I don’t want this post to come across as complaining about my body – I’m naturally small and I know I’m lucky. I just can never believe the range of sizes ‘they’ (whoever the ‘they’ is who makes those charts) think I am. By Watters’ logic, I was a 000 bust, 0/2 waist and 4/6 hips! That’s a range of 6 different sizes (the imaginary 000 and 00, 0, 2, 4, 6).
I do wish that, as these dresses are made when we order them, a little more care could be taken to match them to the measurements of each bride. Not complete custom tailoring, but at least the ability to say ‘Can you cut the top in a size 0, and the bottom in a size 6?’ Also, who decided that ‘0’ is a size?!
Was picking the size of your dress this traumatizing for anyone else?