True Colors

The Dress. Probably the biggest concern of every bride-to-be. You have your general style, shape, and cut. Then there's length, sleeves, veil, fabric, etc etc etc. For South Asian brides, I'm pretty sure the first question to answer is "What color?" For the traditional white wedding, there's white, ivory, and if you're feeling daring, champagne. I've seen SA brides in just about every shade of the rainbow, but the traditional go-to is red, and has been for just about all of time. Most brides wear red, and somehow, it usually seems to look good on them. Red is actually my favorite color. When given the chance, I will almost always choose it, especially that deep blood shade. So I always thought my wedding dress would be red. That was until I was browsing around bargello.com awhile back and saw this:

**Buyer beware: I'm pretty sure Bargello is all fakes

The reason I fell in love with this lengha was because of the colors. I love antique gold, and prefer it to yellow gold any day. Not to mention, makeup in earth tones just tends to suit my features better. So after seeing this, I was sold on choosing a neutral color for my wedding dress. I sent for a swatch to get a better idea of the colors and beadwork, and the white was too white; not as ivory as it looked in the picture. After weeks of google searches, all I knew was that I wanted something classically decadent with antiqued beading, in a neutral earthy color, and in the style of a longer top and subtly flared skirt. Now, if I were going to Pakistan to get my wedding dress made, that teeny list of notes would have been sufficient. I could've picked any fabric, had it dyed any color, beadwork of my choice, custom tailoring...a true one-of-a-kind lengha in my style. But given the ongoing political turmoil in Pakistan, I decided to forego my annual trip and just go shopping here (Artesia is great for Southern Californian-South Asian brides...Mirage in particular is my favorite store and where I've already done an absurd amount of wedding shopping). About a thousand trips back to google images and here were my main sources of inspiration:

HSY Bridal

A design from Samar Mehdi (probably my favorite Pakistani designer)

Hassan Sheheryar Yasin and his models (2009 I think, my main color inspiration)

So how do you describe that color? It's kind of brown, kind of gold, kind of dusty grey...but that doesn't really translate. I decided to take my pictures in, refer to it as champagne, and call it a day.

I went wedding dress shopping last week (at Mirage) and was able to find the shade I wanted in their swatch book (fingers crossed it comes out close to what I'm picturing) and placed an order based off of a few different dresses I tried on that day. I stuck to a longer top (longer than I thought I would choose) that opens into the skirt, which has a train. It should be here in about 3 months and I'm already aching with anticipation...