$10,000 Wedding Gown

[weddingneedさん]

The average bride spends more than $1,200 on a wedding dress, according to
The Wedding Report, a bridal industry publication. And ritzier options abound,
featured prominently throughout glossy bridal websites and magazines.

The implied message to brides seems to be that the more they spend, the
closer they’ll get to wedding-day perfection.

The spring 2016 issue of "The Knot" magazine, for example, features a
voluminous, $21,000 Galia Lahav gown within its “Real Weddings” section. (That’s
more than many real folks spend on the whole shebang.)

That got us to wondering, when a bride floats down the aisle in a cloud of
satin and tulle, can guests really tell whether she paid a lot or a little?

Our Bridal Gown Price Challenge suggests not.

Fooled by Froufrou

We set out to see whether price and elegance really are connected. In late
February 2016 we rented or borrowed five gently used and new, recent-vintage
wedding gowns, with estimated retail values of $500 to $10,000, according to the
companies that supplied them.

We did our best to control for bridesmaid dresses uk of similar style so that
personal preference wouldn’t enter into the judgments. We then asked colleagues
at our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters—regular folks and generally not
fashionistas—to match the gowns with their retail values. We let our amateur
judges view the gowns and touch their fabric, but not look inside or otherwise
handle the garments (we insisted they wash their hands first). Eighty-nine women
and 54 men participated.

The only wedding gown that most people properly identified by price was the
least expensive: a bright white, polyester David’s Wedding Dresses made in
China. Fifty-eight percent matched it with its price: $500. Only 41 percent
properly guessed that an all-silk, elaborately pieced, made-in-America Vera Wang
design was the most costly, at $10,000. Gowns priced in the middle—the $1,100
Mary’s Bridal, $3,200 Winnie Couture, and $6,500 Ines di Santo—stumped our
amateur judges. More than half thought the $3,200 dress was $1,100 or less, and
85 percent thought the $1,100 gown—with the most embellishment—cost $3,200 or
more. Women were right more often than men, but those who had shopped for prom dresses uk were not necessarily
better judges. Just two of 143 people got all five prices right.