These should ideally begin 9 or 12 months before the day of your wedding because unless you’re buying a ready-made garment, your dress will first have to be found and then repeatedly fitted and altered. First you’ll spend a couple of months visiting Bridal boutiques just to browse through and try on various dresses. Take a notebook and jot down every style, designer and dress that catches your eye. Don’t make your entourage too large and make sure you take someone with an eye for detail to help you out. Too many contradicting opinions could just confuse you so be selective about who goes.
At the 6-8 month mark, order your dress. Be aware that couture dresses need to be ordered 6 months in advance. This will give you plenty of time to attend fittings. Obtain a swatch of fabric from your dressmaker as well as pictures of yourself in your dress (take ones from the front and the back). Now shopping for accessories and finding a hairstyle will be a lot easier.
This is also the time when you start experimenting with hair and make-up at salons.
At the 3 month mark, you should have bought all your accessories, lingerie and little extras. This is the time when you will usually attend your first fitting, and after various alterations, your last fitting too! During these final fittings take an honest, fashion-conscious person along. Trust them to point out unflattering ruffles and the like.
Buy your dress around 2 weeks before the wedding and try it on once again to make sure its perfect.
Bridesmaids and groomsmen need their clothes to be fitted and altered too. You can look for their attire around 6 months before the wedding. This will give them enough time to attend fittings and make sure they do so! The bridesmaids will be a reflection of the style of your wedding but don’t annoy your friends by stuffing them into dresses they will abhor. This is undoubtedly a little trickier than finding your own dress since you need to take the shapes, budgets and tastes of more than one person into account. A-line skirts and empire waists do justice to almost every girl and if your eye catches and glints at a dress that is beyond their budgets, consider covering the difference yourself.
Delegate tasks, you have every right to. If other aspects of the wedding at demanding your attention, leave the attire of the bridesmaids and groomsmen to the most trusted and responsible bridesmaid.
Finally, let us consider the groom. He might feel like the insignificant buttress of the bride but that isn’t an excuse to not dress up to the occasion. Let’s state the obvious here; the groom does not have much of a choice in what he wears. Once you know what he’ll be wearing, send him off to the fittings and make sure the tailor doesn’t constrict the poor guy into his idea of ‘a perfect fit’. If you want your fiancé to dance with you on the big day without splitting any seams, his suit (or tuxedo) needs to have breathing space as well.