Getting a wedding dress that's the perfect fit

Getting a wedding dress that's the perfect fit

The woes of finding a wedding dress. Should you go with sleek satin? A delicate chiffon? Or, perhaps ladylike lace set over ivory charmeuse is more to your liking?Finding the

best style to suit your body, then deciding how much of the budget should go toward this (ideally) worn-once-in-a-lifetime frock, can be quite a conundrum.When Ivy Su got

married last year, she searched through shelves of dresses at a plethora of bridal boutiques across Calgary. When she didn’t find anything she liked, Su began to search online,

viewing more than 8,000 dress images in hopes of locating the perfect fit.

Not one dress struck a chord. To make matters worse, Su wasn’t just looking for a special frock, she needed six wedding dresses in total for her traditional Chinese ceremony.
“I was looking at all of these dresses and nothing worked. I liked the top from one dress and the bottom of another,” Su says.The 25-year-old decided to take matters into her

own hands. Su sketched out ideas for several looks. She researched fabrics, then located and hired designers and seamstresses to help execute her dream dresses.

“I had all six of them custom designed. I went a bit over the top,” she says with a laugh.“I had a great wedding day; it was like my own personal fashion show.”Su, an

accounting and business student at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, suspected she wasn’t the only bride in Calgary who had trouble finding a dress. It

was while planning her own wedding wardrobe that she began to see potential in a business specializing in helping soon-to-be brides obtain custom-designed gowns.

“I wanted to provide a service to brides where they could have input into the look of their dress and be able to choose from good quality materials at affordable prices,” she

says.“After designing six of my own dresses and learning how to source fabrics and find designers around the world, I had a good idea of where to start.”Su founded Ruby Woo

Wedding Couture Inc. during the winter of 2011.“Many brides will come to me with photos or sketches they’ve drawn. I want this to be a fun process for brides. I want them to

have total creative input into the dress and to know that they’re going to get quality for their money,” says Su.