Casablanca Bridal Makes Finding the Perfect Wedding Dress a Breeze
After the ring reveal gets posted to Instagram and the wedding venue and date are secured, there will be a long, long list of decisions every bride will need to make—and some of these will be tougher than others. Do you want a destination wedding? Do you hire a wedding planner? (Yes. If it’s possible, yes.) If you invite this cousin do you have to invite that other one? The list goes on and on.
One decision that won’t be so difficult, however, is saying yes to the perfect wedding dress. To help make your dress selection as smooth and fun as possible, we’ve chatted with Crystal Lu, Creative Director of Casablanca Bridal, for her top-five tips for finding the perfect dress. Here’s what this bridal expert had to say.
Tip 1: Give Yourself Plenty of Time to Find, Order and Alter Your Wedding Dress
“We always like to suggest a 9-12 month window to get your wedding dress because, at Casablanca, we don’t mass produce any of our dresses,” Lu explains. “Every single dress is made to order for all of our brides and their custom measurements, so only slight alterations are needed, if any.”
After finding and ordering your dream dress, don’t worry if you need a few alterations. “We have our seamstresses in-house, so once the dress comes and we can do fittings inside our location—we do it all from A to Z,” Lu says. “We do such heavy customizations, so it’s really nice to have seamstresses who understand our craftsmanship quality, products and styles and can really help achieve what the bride wants.”
For brides on a tighter timeline, Casablanca Bridal offers plenty of different rush options at different price points. But for that safe spot, Lu recommends sticking to that 9-12 month buffer.
Tip 2: Don’t be Afraid to Try on Different Styles and Aesthetics
“One of the top things we always try to tell our brides is just be open-minded when they’re coming to the bridal appointment. Bring some inspiration or a moodboard to give your stylist a general idea of what aesthetic you are looking for,” says Lu, “but at the end of the day, try to stay open-minded and really trust your stylist. Our bridal experts really understand how to pick the best silhouette while taking your overall mood and aesthetic into consideration.”
Another key thing to keep in mind is that wedding dresses look totally different online and on the hanger versus on your body—and you may come to find that you say yes to an entirely unexpected design. “Oftentimes, a bride will come in saying she wants a big poofy princess ball gown, and she ends up leaving with something with no lace, no beading, very minimalistic…nothing like what she envisioned in the beginning,” Lu shares. “We’re so happy we’re able to find it. It makes it more special and exciting.”
Tip 3: Don’t Bring Too Many People to Your Try-On Appointments
“You would think it’d be like what you see in the movies: you bring a whole bridal party, you might get brunch beforehand and turn it into a fun girls day out. But in reality, it’s more complicated when you have more people,” Lu reveals. “There are so many more opinions and thoughts—it’s too many cooks in the kitchen, and it actually ends up confusing the brides even more because they want to give everyone a chance to share their thoughts. But everyone has a different vision, and the bride can tend to get lost in everyone else’s ideas and forget that it’s supposed to be her big day and her dress.”
The golden number is one or two people who have your best interest at heart. However, if you want to have a chance to have a bigger entourage with you but end up feeling overwhelmed when it’s time to say yes, Lu suggests coming back alone to revisit your top-two or -three picks from the first appointment.
Tip 4: Shop a Brand That Shares Your Values
The wedding industry has become incredibly commercialized, and for brides who want to have a more conscious wedding, finding the right dress or even a shop that shares your values can be almost impossible. Casablanca Bridal, however, is a fantastic choice for sustainable brides.
“Every dress is made to order, ultimately lowering our carbon footprint. We have our own manufacturing facility that we built from the ground up. It uses solar-powered energy for heating all the water. And we’ve never discontinued a style in almost 27 years,” Lu explains. “A lot of other brands or designers are always discontinuing styles that they’ve already mass produced, and some of them will just burn the dresses or destroy them and put them in dumps because it’s a branding issue and they don’t want to donate to the wrong target audience—it’s sad. It’s so crucial that we’re not just mass producing and then all of a sudden discontinuing styles that never got to see a beautiful bride.”
Because Casablanca Bridal is actually a wholesale designer, the company has its own production facility—meaning that as a bride, you will get to work directly with the designer and manufacturer of your dress rather than working with a third-party boutique.
Your purchase at Casablanca Bridal will also go toward a good cause. Casablanca hosts special events through its Celebrate Forever Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers free coaching and resources for healthy relationship education. These events range from fun date-night ideas to relationship and marriage coaching for happier, healthier love lives.
Tip 5: Relax and Enjoy Your Appointment!
Let’s paint a picture of what your first appointment at Casablanca Bridal’s flagship store looks like. The first step? Making an appointment with the Casablanca team. A stylist will chat with you and go over everything—your budget, venue, aesthetic and any dresses that you’ve already saved on Pinterest or Instagram. Should you not have these answers quite yet, they’ll talk you through everything at the start of your appointment.
Next, head into the beautiful Crystal Cove flagship store. “I personally love our location because we are right by the ocean,” Lu says. “We have a beautiful waterfront view—it’s a really nice, calm, serene environment, which I think is really comforting for our brides because your first dress-fitting experience can be really overwhelming.”
Upon arrival, you’ll be greeted by one of Casablanca Bridal’s fabulous stylists who will pull dresses for you, then get you and your party situated in your own seating area. “We always like to pop some bubbly for our brides!” Lu adds.
From there, trust that your stylist will pull plenty of styles according to your preference along with a few others that may pleasantly surprise you—all you need to do is enjoy the experience and focus on which dress makes you feel the most spectacular.
Whether you’re keeping things small and simple or throwing the wedding of the century, Casablanca Bridal can help you find the dress of your dreams without all the drama. To start your dress journey, make an appointment with the Casablanca Flagship Store today!
Casablanca Bridal
7942 E Coast Hwy
Newport Beach, CA 92657
949.715.8228
@casablancabridal
Born and raised near the Pacific Coast, Jordan Nishkian is a California girl through and through. She graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a BA in Creative Writing and a BA in Anthropology, and her favorite place to be is curled up in a comfy chair with a book in her hand and a pen in her hair.
