How much does a wedding dress cost?
Short answer: a wedding dress costs about a 1000€.
Long answer: Wedding dress price is determined by which quality group the dress belongs to (there are 3 groups in total). In this guide we break down the quality and price ranges.
It is possible to find a high quality yet affordable wedding dress if you know what you are looking for, so we have included some quality tips also.
Premium quality wedding dresses
The highest quality bridal gowns are manufactured by a small group of very exclusive manufacturers. There are countless bridal brands who compete to become their customer. The only downside to a premium quality wedding dress is their price.
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Price: A high quality wedding dress costs 1100€ - 4000€.
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Support: A premium quality bridal gown is almost always very well supported with built-in breast cups and multiple support bones. If you don’t know what these mean we suggest watching this 1-minute clip
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Fit: High end bridal gown fit is far superior to the other groups. A dress with a good fit and proper support doesn't just follow the shape of the wearer's body, it reshapes the body to look amazing.
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Materials: In a picture all wedding dresses look similar thanks to Photoshop, including the materials. It is easy to mistakenly think all lace and tulle are created equal. A high-quality wedding dress uses much higher quality materials that are softer and move in a more natural way. The only way to spot the difference between a high-quality material and a cheap material is to see them in person. You can learn more about the importance of this in our where to buy a wedding dress from guide.
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Workmanship: A premium wedding gown requires tens of hours of work to make, which is the main reason why they are more expensive than dresses in the other quality groups. Wedding dress consists of multiple layers which means their manufacturing cannot be automated like most clothing today.
Medium quality wedding dresses
The average quality bridal gowns have been designed to be much more simple with fewer cuts, fewer details and less support than the higher quality ones. The simplified design hurts their fit but also allows them to be manufactured quick and cheap. They are often available only in small sizes only.
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Price: A medium quality wedding dress costs 500€ - 1100€.
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Support: They are either not supported at all or have very light support. Especially support bones are usually missing, which means you will need to wear functional underwear under your wedding dress.
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Fit: The main cost savings are achieved here. The entire design of a medium quality dress is built around the concept of making them fast and affordable to manufacture. A proper fitting is always important when buying a wedding dress, but the cheaper the dress, the more likely the fit will disappoint.
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Materials: Medium quality bridal gowns usually have fairly good materials, but they’ll either have less lace details or they’ll use an overall lace which means the lace pieces are not individually attached but the lace is from a single piece ready-made fabric.
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Workmanship: A medium quality wedding gown should have fairly good quality workmanship with no mistakes. There are less layers so parts of the dress manufacturing can be automated. There is still plenty of manual work involved. Sadly some medium quality bridal brands have begun moving their manufacturing to the Eastern European sweatshops (more about these in the next section).
Low quality wedding dresses
There are many issues with this category, most importantly poor human rights for the workers. Cheap clothing with "Made in EU" tag are affected just the same as clothing from Asia.
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Price: A low quality wedding dress costs 150€ - 500€.
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Support: Many poor quality bridal gowns have no support which means the design must include shoulder straps for the dress to be wearable. Some on the other hand will have a simple (most often plastic) structure that makes the dress look stiff. The chest part will look like it stands on its own and is not connected to the wearer.
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Fit: Without any support structures a low-quality wedding dress will easily look baggy and stiff. This leads to the bride correcting the dress non stop on her big day, e.g. pulling up the chest part, pulling the dress down from the hips, etc.
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Materials: Poor material quality is usually difficult to spot from a picture as they are heavily edited. Cheap fabrics are often hard, plasticky, shiny and the colors are not pure.
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Workmanship: This is the main issue with most wedding dresses under 500€. If the dress is not simplified single layer dress, i.e. a white evening dress, it requires a lot of time to make. Lots of manual work and cheap price means the workers are not paid a liveable wage. We recommend reading about the Clean Clothes Campaign and supporting their work if you can. The issue isn't somewhere else, it is happening in Europe also.
