You Cannot Try On the Size They Stock

A bridal shop keeps a drawer of clips behind the counter. Bulldog clips mostly, sometimes a handful of pegs. They come out when the gown will not do up at the back, which is nearly always, because the dress on the rack was never going to be your dress. It is a sample. Someone clips it, and you stand at the mirror doing arithmetic about what it would look like cut in your size.

That part is not a scandal. No small shop can hold every design in every size. The scandal is the next ten minutes. The sample will not go over your shoulders at all. The assistant goes pink, and you stand in a curtained cubicle in your good underwear working out how to be gracious about it. You booked that appointment because the website said the shop went up to a 40.

It probably does, on an order form, months from now. The number was true. It was also, at four o'clock on a Saturday with your mum in the good chair outside the curtain, useless.

Two numbers wearing the same clothes

A bridal shop has two size numbers and tends to publish one. The first is the range it can order: a page in a wholesale catalogue, a promise about what can be cut for you over the coming months. The second is the range it holds, the sample gowns hanging in the room, the ones you can put your body inside on the day. One is a purchasing arrangement. The other is your afternoon.

Both go up on the website in the same place, in the same font, and a bride cannot tell them apart. Of the 173 Australian bridal stores in this directory, 81 publish a size range at all. Fewer than half. Of the 69 that publish a size range and a price together, 13 say plainly that they mean sample stock, 11 that they mean what can be ordered, and 45 print a number without saying which.

Eighty nine of the 173 read as size inclusive on a generous test: a published range topping out at 22 or above, or the shop's own language about curve, plus-size and extended sizing. Thirty two describe the sizes actually hanging in the room. Twenty one do both.

All of that measures what shops publish and nothing else. A shop that leaves the question open may well have a rail that would delight you; those 45 have told you about a website, not a stockroom.

A shop in the South Burnett shows how ordinary the silence is. It prints a price against all 198 wedding gowns in its own catalogue, which is rare, and its sizing charts run 0 to 32 with larger sizes by special order. That 0 to 32 is a range the store can order in. Nothing it publishes says what will be hanging up on the Thursday you have booked. Not a knock on its stock. Nobody makes a shop say whether its number is what is hanging up or what can be ordered, and most of them do not.

At a Gold Coast shop the number means a third thing again. Its filter offers sizes 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28. Read that as a rail and you would drive over cheerfully. But the stock is largely pre-loved and largely one-off, so a size on that list exists for exactly as long as the single gown wearing it does. The filter is not dishonest. It is a record of what has come through the door, not a promise about Tuesday.

The shops that say it out loud

One label puts sample size and order range in a single FAQ answer. That is the whole fix, printed for free:

All our KWH Boutiques will stock size AUS/UK 10 | US 6 samples in store for you to try on. We also carry our popular designs in size AUS/UK 16 | US 12 samples. Majority of our gowns are available in sizes AUS/UK 4 | US 0 - AUS/UK 24 | US 20. Some pieces are only available to size AUS/UK 16 | US 12, however these are limited.

Four facts, and only one of them is the number most shops print. Majority is the word doing the work in that orderable 4 to 24: most gowns, not all. The samples are an AUS 10 and an AUS 16, so a bride tries on one size and orders another, and she knew it before she drove there. Gowns run $3,990 to $13,000, alterations excluded, and the label calls those "expected and essential".

A Hobart shop does the same job in plainer words:

The samples we have in store to try on range from size 6-32, however most of these gowns are available to order in sizes 2-40 … Our gowns are made to order so depending on the designer we can order from a size 0-40+!

Two numbers, both published, both labelled, from a shop whose bridal products run to a median of about $799.

A Brisbane gallery sells at a far higher price and is just as exact. It publishes 4 to 18 to order, says a gown is made to your closest standard size rather than to your measurements, and lists its samples separately as "sizes 8s, 10s, 12s and some plus sizes". Gowns run $3,000 to $14,000. A bride spending that should know she will try mostly 8s to 12s and order something else, and she is told.

A boutique in Gladstone makes gowns to order from AU0 to AU36 and hangs samples in AU10 to AU28, at $2,000 to $8,000. Both figures, published, distinct. Regional Queensland has done what plenty of city rooms still have not.

Line those four up and the gap is the same shape every time. The label can cut most of its gowns to a 24 and hangs a 10 and a 16. The Hobart shop can order most of its gowns to a 40 and hangs to a 32. The gallery can order an 18 and hangs mostly 8s to 12s. The Gladstone boutique can make a 36 and hangs to a 28. The number you can actually get into is the smaller one every time, by six or eight sizes. That is not a scandal either. Keeping it off the page is.

One Sydney showroom has no single number to give: the 2 to 30 chart on its sizing page belongs to a single Spanish house it stocks, and other labels on the same floor are cut narrower, one stopping at 18. So it says the useful thing in words. Not every style is in the showroom, each one it has is held in one colour and one size, and email ahead if you are coming for a particular gown. Thirteen labels stocked, one size of each on the floor. A bride reading that knows what her afternoon looks like before she spends it.

A sample rail is not a limit

Two studios publish what is on the rail and nothing about what they can order, which makes them easy to misread. One, in Melbourne, gives its sample sizes designer by designer: minis in 8 to 12 from one house, gowns in 10 to 12 from another, 10 to 14 from two more, and notes that a sample can be taken in by a size or two. Its gowns run $2,250 to $8,500. The other, up on the Central Coast, holds samples in AU 8 to 14, says each order is then made in the bride's closest size, and prices its gowns $3,000 to $7,500.

Those are sample ranges. They are not what either studio can make, and neither publishes a ceiling on what it can order. Reading 8 to 14 as a wall would be a rotten reward for that honesty. A studio that tells you what is on its rail has told you more than most. Ring and ask what it can cut.

There is one way around the problem entirely. A dressmaker on the Sunshine Coast drafts patterns from size 6 to 36 and beyond and cuts them from the client's own measurements. No stock, no order, no sample, no rail. Also nothing to try on, no published price on a fully custom gown until you have sat down with her, and six to twelve months of waiting. A trade, not a solution. But it is the one arrangement here where the question cannot come up.

Ask the question nobody prints

Until the trade fixes this, the work falls on brides, which is the wrong way around. Do it anyway. Ring before you book and ask four things.

• What sizes are the samples I can try on this month?
• Is the range on your website what you hold or what you can order?
• Which designers have samples near my size, and how far can they be let out?
• What does a gown cost before alterations, and what do alterations add?

Ask the last one early. Across 112 published ranges the median low figure is $999 and the median high is $4,850. The high figure is the honest one: the low is padded out with accessories, sample clearance and pieces that are not gowns. Budget against $4,850.

One sentence on a website saves the call, and some shops already write it. One store tells brides it carries dresses "up to size 30 for you to try on in store", and says many of its gowns can be ordered up to a 36. Its published designer bands run from $1,800 to $15,000. Another states its order range flatly and repeats it, "All of our dresses are made-to-order in sizes 2 to 28", and keeps curve gowns in the shop to be tried on.

A size range you cannot try on is advertising. The clips in the drawer are fine. Being ambushed by them, in your good underwear, on a Saturday, with your mum outside the curtain, is not.