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Enough with the depressing articles on the economy, already. They either make you feel bummed out about what you can’t spend, or guilty about what you shouldn’t. But everyone wants to splurge on something once or twice in a lifetime, and your wedding dress just might be your pick.
Yes, you are a responsible, good-head-on-her-shoulders woman who is giving serious thought to her retirement savings. But you also may be thinking about splurging on your wedding dress.
If you are, you are well within your rights to clam up about the price. But if you’re feeling the need to spin that splurge to your loved ones, there are a few women who have blazed a trail that will make your wedding day indulgence look like a positive bargain.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European noblewomen were expected to show off the family might at their weddings with a display of the family wealth. Their wedding gowns were made of layers and layers of rich, heavy fabric, and were sometimes so covered in jewels that the fabric couldn’t be seen. The first wedding dance was probably a slow one; sometimes the gowns were so heavy that they needed help walking down the aisle.
Melania Knauss gave them a nod when she married Donald Trump in 2005. She wore a Galliano number that weighed nearly 50 pounds, complete with a 13-foot train that cost a reported $100,000. The gown was made from 300 feet of satin (visible) set off with 1,500 crystal rhinestones.
Only $100,000? She may have been going with a simple look because it was The Donald’s third marriage.
Catherine Zeta-Jones raised the ante to a $250,000 dress when she married Michael Douglas in November of 2000. Her gown was an ivory sheath Christian Lacroix in beaded duchess satin with a train of antique Chantilly lace, topped off with the ultimate accessory for the shy bride, a diamond tiara. The two made up for some of their wedding excess by asking that guests donate to a charitable foundation in the name of their son rather than giving gifts. And Zeta-Jones, while ready to shell out for a wedding dress, certainly knew a few clever cost-cutting tips. Her tiara was a loan from Fred Leighton Diamonds. So when you’re planning, don’t forget to check in with your celebrity jewelry designer friends.
If you’re convinced that blended fabrics are inherently tacky, you may change your mind when you see the dress designed by Mauro Adami (the lead designer for Milan’s ultrachic Domo Adami) for London’s Hatton Garden Jewelry Week. The dress, valued at £240,000, is made of 120 feet of fabric spun from silk and platinum. Yes, platinum. To say that the dress has a nice shine is kind of like saying the Eiffel Tower has a pretty good view. And then there is the 2004 wedding of Vanisha Mittal and Amit Bhatia. Bhatia is a successful investment banker and Vanisha works in the family business… Which happens to be an international steel empire. The total tab for the wedding was about 90 million U.S. dollars. The bride’s trousseau cost a reported 30 million British pounds… But that included 15 different outfits, jewelry, and the services of three of India’s best-known designers. So once you break it down, it’s really quite reasonable.
If you really want the absolute top you-just-might-be-dropping-a-little-too-much-coin-on-this wedding gown, you’ll have to go to bridal designer Renee Strauss and Martin Katz Jewelers, who teamed up in 2006 to create a dress so expensive it has a title. The Diamond Wedding Gown was bedecked with 150 carats worth of – you guessed it -diamonds, and was priced at a tidy 12 million dollars.
Doesn’t your wedding dress look like a sensible purchase now?
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Source by Unia A Griffin
