5 Wedding Dress Terms You Need to Know Before Buying One

So, it’s your big day! You want your wedding dress to be the most significant and eye-popping on your wedding event. You already started to scour the best designers and bridal gown shops to find your dream wedding dress. While shopping for your wedding dresses in NYC, you may come across several terms and phrases such as demi-couture and prêt-à-porter, or many more that you haven’t heard before.  In fact, some word even seems to be derived from a completely different language and that’s because some of them are. 

Terms & Phrases Related to Wedding Dresses 

The exotic set of words introduces a whole new lexicon of terms related to your wedding dress design, fabric and embellishment, which is why, it is extremely important to understand them before going for a bridal gown shopping in NYC.  Listed below are some of the most common terms and their definitions used by your wedding dress designers’ at best bridal salon in NYC .

Haute Couture/Couture

Haute Couture is a French word for “high-sewing” and in fashion industry, it’s a term reserved for fashion houses who have earned this title.  Technically, haute couture garments are only considered true haute couture if they are produced from luxury fashion designers and meet certain criteria by the Parisian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Some of the wedding dresses are tagged as houte-couture if they are made-to-measure for the intended user, and has been created using high-quality fabric and hand-made techniques. This is technically incorrect, as haute-couture design need to meet the guidelines to make it true haute.

Made-to-Measure

Made-to-measure refers to custom-made gowns which have been designed with high-quality, luxury fabrics and affluent details to match the bride’s specification.  Made-to measure gowns are built from the scratch to fit the body and shape of intended wearer.  Mostly the dresses are hand-made or hand-sewn with different elements only for the wearer, rather than producing for the mass. Additionally, the made-to-measure dresses are produced by recognizable designers only.

Demi-Couture

The word “demi” represents “half” in French language, so demi-couture means partially couture designer dresses. Demi-couture dresses have the same specification of a couture dress, such as the fabric, style and design, but they are intended to serve a mass production. These dresses are significantly lower than a couture dress and can be purchased off-the-rack.

Ready-to-wear/prêt-à-porter

The ready-to-wear bridal gowns are pre-designed and available to buy on any online or offline bridal shop in NYC. The dresses are prêt-à-porter, means pre-designed, so that brides can change the fit according to personal preferences.  

The above-mentioned terms are commonly associated with wedding dress designing and styling. You can take help from the information, next time when you are up for shopping wedding gown for your big day.