Would You Take Your Fiancé Dress Shopping?

I spent this past Friday night watching approximately six to seven episodes in a row of TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress, the network’s reality show set in New York’s famous Kleinfeld Bridal Salon that features all of the joy, drama and general craziness that surrounds a bride’s trying on and buying her dream wedding gown. (Very cool, I know — but I was out of town for a relative’s graduation, and there’s only so much to do in a Hampton Inn.)

Anyway. While not much shocked me — working in this industry, you hear enough stories that after a while, you’re just not surprised anymore — there was one thing I found rather odd, and immediately wondered what you Philly brides out there thought of it.

Girls were bringing in their fiancés! To watch them try on dresses! To render their opinions!

I mean, I realize that this is a totally personal decision, but I suppose I didn’t realize that this might go on much more than I thought. And personally, I must say, I don’t get it. I can certainly understand that you’d want your husband-to-be to like your dress — I don’t think there’s a bride out there who wants him to think, Eh, when she’s walking down the aisle towards him — but I’m just not sure about the method of allowing him to approve of or not approve of dresses during the actual selection process.

There was a girl whose fiancé was a bit late meeting them, so she started without him — and three dresses in, she quite obviously found The One. Her face completely changed, she started to tear up, she said she felt stunning in that dress, like a bride, like she wanted to walk down the aisle right that second. She beamed and beamed in front of the mirror until he arrived, declared it to not be The One, and she instantly erased all that joy and certainty and took it off. And I think what bothers me, is — if he hadn’t been there, and she had gotten that dress, would he have felt the same way when she appeared at the top of the aisle on their wedding day? I doubt it. I bet he would have loved the way she looked. I bet she would have taken his breath away, that he would have gotten teary himself, and that he would have whispered to her that he’s never seen her look so beautiful. But instead, her appointment went on for hours as her hard-to-please groom dismissed nearly everything she came out in like some frustrated fashionista.

Of course, I’m also super traditional when it comes to the groom not seeing the bride before that moment when she appears at the top of the aisle. And I know that. I also know that not all brides are, either showing their groom their dress beforehand or doing pre-ceremony pictures. But I still wonder if the fiancés coming into Kleinfeld’s with their brides were just random happenings, or indicative of some modern trend of letting the groom a little bit more in on this whole wedding-planning thing.

What do you think? Would you or did you bring your groom along on your dress-shopping outings? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

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