Getting married? Target is launching a bridal collection by Isaac Mizrahi. The collection has “8 stunning looks in ivory, white and black,” and range in price from $9.99-$159.99.
“My bridal gowns are all reinventions of the classics, providing an affordable alternative for women everywhere,” says designer Isaac Mizrahi. “I put a lot of design energy into designing this collection for Target because every bride deserves to find the gown of her dreams, regardless of her budget. Every woman remembers how she felt on her wedding day for the rest of her life, so ensuring she feels confident in the ‘perfect’ dress is very important to me.”
Target adds that the dresses and matching cummerbunds and ties are also appropriate for other formal occasions, like prom. So the question remains, would you buy your wedding dress at Target? Hipsters? Would you? —MEGHANN MARCO
New: Target wedding dresses [Star-Register]
Designer Isaac Mizrahi launches affordable attire for the entire wedding party available exclusively at Target.com (Press Release) [Target]
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I’m getting married in July. My fiancee (sorry, to lazy to find the accent) are trying to keep within a reasonable budget, and the target wedding stuff is actually pretty nice. We ended up buying invitations/programs/thank you cards there. They’re not cheaper than the most plain invitations you can get from a printer, but they’re cheaper than the equivalent invitations from the printer. They also have a lot of nice and inexpensive wedding favors/bubbles/etc.
@trixare4kids: Nice! Choose a day!
A friend of mine blew $3000 on a wedding dress. All the bridesmaids kinda freaked out at her (That money could go towards an open bar!!!). Her reasoning was that she would pass down the dress to her daughter to wear at her wedding.
1. Like her mom did, right?
2. What if she only had sons?
I’m all for Target dresses. Put the money you saved into the reception.
“Exclusively available at Target.com.” So 1) you’re buying a dress without knowing whether or not it fits from 2) a retailer that has fit issues. I love Target, but I can barely buy civilian clothes there without trying on multiple sizes of everything.
As for “what are you going to do with that dress”… I wear mine, and the veil, every Halloween.
The kids at my kids’ school always love it.
I would definitely have considered a dress from Target when I got married. I had the most difficult time finding a simple dress that wasn’t covered in beads or embroidery (that didn’t cost a fortune) when I got married.
I think this is perfect. My only beef with Target clothes is that after a few wears and washes, they start to lose their shape. But I don’t imagine wearing my dress a few times before the wedding, so, sounds like a match made in heaven! I actually already have my dress . . . It was 400 bucks at Davids, which I thought was super cheap, but the matching veil-thing that I absolutely had to have was 150 extra. Since I bought the dress I’ve changed grooms, so maybe I’ll change dresses as well and try out these Target dresses. Anyone looking for a sleeveless gown with a ruffle-y train in a size six? It comes with matching veil . . .
Speaking of Target, have you seen Target’s line of bedding? Can we say “Restoration Hardware?” Good colors without the price premium that you’d pay at Restoration Hardware.
Absolutely, if it fit and looked good. I never understood the impulse to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding dress. I bought mine at a sample sale (it was a bridesmaid’s dress, in white) for $150.
FWIW, just got back from a wedding last month where the ring came from Wal-Mart “fine jewelry”. Hey, it is a matter of cash. Rich people aren’t going to go to Target for a dress, but I think there really is an under-served market of less well-to-do people who want to get married in some sense of style.
@wenhaver: That’s a lot of my philosophy on the subject. The important part of my ceremony was that my husband and I got to say “I do” in front of people we loved. That the church wasn’t coated in flowers top to bottom, and that I don’t get the cherished memory of a drunken uncle grope seems like a bonus more than a drawback.
A friend recently got married, and her husband drank so much at the reception that he threw up on her on the way to the honeymoon suite. Call me crazy, but I like my wedding better.
@surfacenoise76: Spending a lot of money on a wedding may be foolish, but it’s a lot less than you’ll spend on the divorce.
I personally wouldn’t wear a Target dress. I love Target, and I love a good buy, but I especially love looking unique. While I wasn’t unique in that I spent a pretty penny on my dress, my dress had a very couture look and six months later I continue to receive compliments (from friends, family and even from the waitstaff at the country club where we hosted the wedding) on how unique my dress was. For me, the unique factor and the compliments it inspired were worth the price tag. Yes, I’m the stereotypical American consumerist.
I would do it – if I found one I liked. For my wedding, I went to David’s Bridal, spent around $300, got decent customer service. I would have liked to spend less, but I wanted to get an identifiably “wedding” dress (white, a bit of a train in the back), and didn’t know where else to go.
Thank goodness. This makes perfect sense to me. So long as the dress is acceptable to the bride I’d welcome this. Just remember to toss on an additional $100+ for alterations and this should be fine.
One of the scariest parts of marrage right now for me, and many coworkers, is the cost. How are you supposed to start a life with someone when it costs almost $10,000 when all is said and done for a modest wedding?
People should be able to afford a nice wedding. I think this will make many peoples lives happier.
@Techguy1138:
Resist the pressure to go way into debt for your wedding!
Hubby and I got married with 10 close relatives in the church I attended growing up. I wore the aforementioned (look way up in comments) $45 thrift-store designer dress and felt like a princess. My brother was the “official” photographer (now, *this* I do not recommend). We opened presents while having hors d’oeuvres at my parents’ house, and went out to dinner (tout ensemble) at a waterfront restaurant.
Total cost: Surely no more than $500. (This was a while back.) Lack of pressure about whom to invite and where to seat them: Priceless.
We’ve lasted almost 32 years. Woot!
if i buy a wedding dress anywhere ,they will probably put me away………….
Looking at the photo album on the Target website, they look decent enough (the gallery shown were in the range of $150-$200). Why not? They’re probably only available on the website because they don’t know what the demand is yet. Outfitting all their stores with wedding dresses? Costly.
The $3000+ wedding dresses do look pretty, but I’m in the “weddings cost a lot of money.” I’d rather the guests have better food/drinks, etc than have a designer dress.
@Jon Parker:
Not true… my wedding cost around $6,000, the divorce cost me a grand total of $525. And I’m the one who paid the expenses for both. Damn men. That reminds me, it’s almost my annivorsary. Feh.
@B: Not really. Black’s the color of formality in the US, so it can’t really be “unlucky” at a wedding. (Are all the grooms in tuxes wishing unlucky weddings on the bride?) The only dress-code thing that’s always and direly tacky at weddings is upstaging the bride (typically by wearing white, but also by dressing like a skank with the assets hanging out so everyone stares at you).
And I’ll be the one to come out and say my wedding was expensive and it was a HOOT. It cost more than the down payment on our house (I’m not telling how much more). But then, I wasn’t paying for it, and I didn’t plan it; that was the kind of party my parents wanted to throw, so more power to them! We had the same philosophy as many people upthread mentioned: Get married with our family and friends who love us around us, celebrate with them, and (for us) have the formal religious ceremony in our faith. That was the important part. My parents just opted that the party part be … big.
My husband and I hosted the rehearsal dinner on the cheap and we did that at an Irish bar and hired an Irish band and Irish dancers. Equally as good a time as the big fancy party the next day.
My fiancee would probably consider this. The dress is all her choice. If she wants something a plain like at Target, fine. The point is, we’re getting married. My belief is, the honeymoon is where you really focus your energies at.
Kudos to Target for a good marketing/product idea. I’m one of the spoiled girls whose parents paid for the whole wedding and had the expensive dress but I know plenty who would and I can’t say I blame them.
Anyone who has recently planned a wedding knows David Bridal’s bad reputation and that independent bridal salons are going out of business like crazy. To give people another option is really smart.
No matter how good target’s design it, the finance will never accept the fact that it was brought from a valued shop. Women think they have the right to be ripped off. The more it cost for the wedding, the better the marriage will be.
Oops, I just re-read Meghann’s original post and saw that she posed this question to “hipsters.” So I guess y’all can disregard anything I said in these comments! 8-/
I think this is great I spent too much on my wedding dress and I don’t even want to pass it on to my daughter.
Women have been brainwashed into believing they have to pay a mint to have a lovely dress…B.S.!!
Most dresses you buy at those bridal stores are MASS PRODUCED anyway, that is the reason it takes so long to get the dress from the shop, the maker waits until they have X amount of orders for the SAME dress and then they stamp them out by machine. So really what is the difference? People want to keep up appearances, so Goddess forbid someone finds out they didn’t spend X amount on a dress. People are such sheep most times.
I would rock the hell out of a target wedding dress and I would be fierce and fabu!
@ElizabethD:
It’s ok. I’m a hipster. You can be my +1.
Sure, I’d wear one. Why not? It would have been a distinct upgrade from what I was married in. When my husband and I got married in Reno, I wore my interview outfit– a pantsuit.
It doesn’t make sense to go into debt for your wedding. And if you find a comfortable dress that you can afford, who cares if it’s from Vera Wang or Target?
i beat you all – my dress was free! one summer of bridal dress shopping for my best friend’s wedding was enough to convince me to wear my mom’s.
i did get a new headpiece and veil – sorry, mom, but i don’t look good in pillbox hats.
for all the people concerned about fit: if the dress costs only 9.99, you’ll probably have some money left in your budget for custom tailoring.
I don’t care about what dress she’s wearing in the pic but I’d sure love to marry her!
My best friend spent almost $2,000 on her dress. That was a huge portion of her wedding budget. She had to make her own flowers to save money. Less than two years later, they divorced. Now she has this huge, poofy, expensive dress in a box somewhere that will probably wind up on ebay.
My husband and I eloped. We wore clothes we already owned. Our “wedding” cost us $25. To us, that memory is worth more than a formal wedding would have been. 8 years and two children later, we’re still going strong.
A dress is a dress. Unless it is an heirloom or someone makes it for you, I honestly don’t understand the fuss. Besides, you could look like utter crap and people would still gush and say how beautiful you looked.
Can I just say I want to hug the lot of you? I’m a student in my 20s and I hear too much of girls my age gush about their extravagant fantasy weddings. It’s an extreme relief to hear people talking sensibly.
My fiancee purchased her first wedding dress on ebay. It’s a J Crew that someone had a horrible photo of. The dress itself is lovely, but she decided to go a different direction and purchased a second dress, a BCBG gown, also from ebay. Total costs including shipping:
Had she not already found something, she absolutely WOULD consider one of the Mizrahi gowns. She has been promoting them on TheKnot (wedding-related forum she frequents). And she will likely be getting her two nieces their bridesmaids dresses from his collection.
Budget + DIY + Treehugginghippiecrap + frigginawesome = us
I type too much, but if you want to discuss further, my email is the same as my username here … @gmail.com.
I’m a dude, wearing dresses doesn’t sound appealing to me, wedding or otherwise, thanks. And, c’mon, no one’s had a nudist wedding?!? (not my taste, but you people are freaks, I’d expect as much from you guys)
An excellent idea — because then you can buy your bridesmaids their dresses too. The only thing worse than paying thousands for a dress you wear once is paying hundreds for a dress you wear once that someone else picked out.
I found my wedding dress on eBay for around $200. What made all the difference in the world was finding a great local tailor – that cost another $135, but that also made the dress fit like it was made for me. I would most definitely advise going cheap on the dress, expensive on the tailor.
And today is our first wedding anniversary! Woo-hoo! We just got back from Vegas, so we’re both relaxing on the web – him with Blabbermouth, me with the Consumerist.
If I decide I want to wear white, sure. But I look pretty awful in it. If he makes them out of a dyeable material like bridesmaid shoes, I’m all over it.
My wife and I sewed our own wedding houppelandes. IIRC, we spent about $3000 on our wedding; most of that was the rings. (It helped that we used the same hall for the wedding and the reception.)
I spent 4k on my wedding dress 2 years ago. Was it worth it? Well it was all silk as was the veil and it looked beautiful, and I didn’t want to look like ass, I have one of those body types that amazingly only looks good in expensive wedding dresses, I tried to go cheaper but the stuff looked like ass. HOWEVER — I think I could have approximated the same look w/2 of the Izaac Mizrahi trapunto wedding dresses (buy an extra one for the material to make a matching bolero jacket)and still would have come out ahead.
I know I sound like a materialistic pig. But you’d have to see my wedding photos to understand.
I would totally buy a dress at target. I would spend the extra money on the recipon. or my honey moon. I dont see the point in spending all that money on a dress your only going to wear once in your life.
“So 1) you’re buying a dress without knowing whether or not it fits from 2) a retailer that has fit issues. I love Target, but I can barely buy civilian clothes there without trying on multiple sizes of everything.”
@ MissedTheExit
I’ve never had formal wear (or normal clothes for that matter) fit me right off the hanger. I would do for a Target wedding dress what I do for all fancy dresses I buy: get it one size too big (to accommodate the chest area) and then have it taken in everywhere else. Being Italian (short and curvy), I have spent much time at old Italian lady seamstress ever since hitting puberty, and it’s a must for anyone who’s not 5’11″ and 115 pounds. She’s not even that expensive!