Appointments

During your appointment, you will work with your assigned expert Vows stylist. Our stylists are dedicated to finding the dress that will make you look and feel your absolute best. If you have already have some ideas about your dream dress, feel free to bring along pictures, Pinterest ideas, etc.  And if you’re coming in blind and have no idea what you want yet, we can work with that, too.  Our experienced stylists will make the search as fun and easy as possible; we LOVE finding you exactly what
you’re looking for, even if you don’t know what that is yet.  Be ready to leave with your dream gown babe.

We recommend having your wedding date and venue booked before you begin your search for a dress.  It is important to have the date and location established so you can envision the wedding’s overall look, and know when your dress needs to be ready! Gowns typically take four to six months to arrive in our store, and alterations generally require one to two months.  Start shopping about eight to ten months in advance to ensure you have plenty of time to make up your mind without any stress!

If your wedding is more than a year away, we recommend waiting a bit.  After all, styles and tastes can change, and dresses can be discontinued.  At Vows, we want to make sure you start your search when you’re truly ready to say yes to the dress!

While we are a family-friendly store, we host multiple
appointments at a time, and although you’ll have your individual appointment
space, children can be a distraction. In our experience, children also get
bored quickly, seeing wedding dress after wedding dress.  We also have very delicate decorations and accents in the store that can be easily broken if handled wrong.

As such, we strongly encourage you to leave the kids at home and let yourself focus on your dress hunt.  If you need to bring children to your appointment, we do ask they are given a separate form of entertainment and remain seated and quiet during the appointment.

Don’t worry!  We’ll help you envision how the dress will look on you, even if it’s not an exact fit. Bridal sizing can be confusing and your consultant will help you even if you don’t happen to be a perfect sample size (and who is?!). Some silhouettes, like ballgowns and A-line dresses, are easier to try on even if the size isn’t perfect. Talk to your consultant and we’ll do everything we can to help you feel comfortable and confident during your appointment! Our consultants are experts using clips and panels to secure the gown for you to see.

We may be biased, but dress shopping is certainly the most fun aspect of wedding planning. So it comes as no surprise you may be tempted to bring everyone along! In our experience, this is really never a good idea. The more people you bring, the more opinions you'll hear and the slower your appointment will run. We find that more than about four guests can start to add unnecessary stress on the bride. We also want to give all our brides a quiet, luxe experience and bringing along a large party can disrupt other appointments. Saturdays we allow you to bring a max of 5 others. If you are hoping to bring more you'll need to visit us on a weekday!

When we order your gown, we order off a designers size chart according to your measurements. Often, brides fall in between two sizes and we highly recommend ordering up! This way, your gown can be perfected in alterations. Even if your gown arrives fitting perfectly, you'll need minor alterations. A hem, bustle, and strap adjustment is typically always necessary. Alterations are an important part of the process - and should never be overlooked!

No - like most all bridal boutiques, our gowns are priced without alterations fees, they also do not include any other fees such as tax, custom or rush fees. We refer to the most experienced and talented seamstresses in Mid-Missouri and their pricing is reflective of that. We advise you budget at least $500 for quality alterations on your gown. As alterations are a separate service, you of course can see the seamstress of your choosing to complete your alterations.

Who doesn’t love champagne?!  We certainly do!  However, as we are a smaller boutique and Saturday’s can be very busy – we do not allow any champagne in the store on Saturdays.  We also have found that champagne WILL slow down an appointment, and we want you to make the most of your appointment time while here, focusing on finding your gown!  If you really, really, really want to have some bubbles during your appointment, please give us a ring.  We can schedule you an appointment during the week and make special arrangements.