A good start for ideas for designing a wedding dress is to consider the theme of the wedding. Is the wedding going to be held in the summer? Winter? Outdoors? Indoors? Answers to these questions can have a significant bearing on the style of wedding dress you design. For example, an outdoor wedding in Texas in the month of August surely necessitates a wedding dress that will not have you soaked in perspiration. You can also consider how formal the wedding ceremony is going to be. Don't have a design already in your head? While bridal magazines offer more trendy wedding dress styles, you can obtain some ideas to use to design your own wedding dress.
While you are free to design a wedding dress that reflects your own personal style, it will more than likely follow one of the standard shapes available for wedding dresses: A-line, empire, straight, ball gown, mermaid, or strapless. The shape of your body is a helpful factor in deciding the shape of wedding dress that is most appropriate for you. If you have a full figure, or what is considered a "pear" shape, an A-line style dress may work best for you. A dress with this style accents the top-half of the body that is smaller while concealing a larger bottom half. Not many women opt for the straight wedding dress, including women with coke-bottle figures, for whom this style of wedding dress was designed to fit. If you don't really fit either of these two, a ball gown may be the choice for you. This style of wedding dress features a more snug look at the waist with an exaggerated full skirt. If you're not sure which style is best for you, visit a bridal shop and try on several styles to see which one appeals to you the most.
Once you have chosen the design, style and shape of your wedding dress, you are ready to consider the type of material. Silk and linen are two types of material that are commonly used to create wedding dresses. They both can be costly and linen is very delicate so you have to be careful with it when putting your dress together. There are materials that blend with these materials with other man-made materials, such as polyester to create a fabric that is beautiful and more forgiving.