Asking a woman if she regrets her wedding dress, or any element of her wedding ‘look’, seems rude, an imposition presuming discontent. Of course, I couch it in niceties, I say ‘Obviously, you looked amazing, but I’m writing a piece on wedding dress regrets and was just wondering – and, look,  you probably don’t, given how fabulous your gown was – but do you regret anything about your wedding dress?’ Then I wince, hoping that my friends, acquaintances and colleagues don’t take offence.

It turns out, though, that most women have a few niggles. 

The dress wasn’t quite what they wanted: they’d been pressured into something, or had made half-hearted concessions to tradition; or they decided to go bold and have since lived to regret it. They glance at the 1980s and '90s photos from time to time – at the outlandish sleeves, the low-heeled shoes dyed to match the dress, the meringue silhouettes – they remember the financial outlay, and are caught somewhere between regret and mirth.

"My friend’s words ringing in my ears: 'You’d better not get the same dress as me.'"

Millie Kendall, MBE, the beauty pioneer and PR whizz behind the phenomenally popular and successful beauty brands Ruby & Millie and BeautyMART, admits that there was an ‘issue’ with her 1988 dress, which she designed herself.

‘I was inspired by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl and wanted a long, tight dress,’ she recalls, ‘more elegant than bridal.’

She approached a seamstress in Venice Beach, California (‘I was married in Bel Air of all places’) and the pair set about creating a gown in a shiny cream fabric (‘It was 1988 and shiny was good’). She refused any advice on the design, persevering with her Funny Girl vision, and had the seamstress sew her into the frock, creating an impressive, but restrictive, silhouette. 

‘I hadn’t given any thought to sitting down!’ she says now, 25 years later. ‘I only realised later that I needed some room to go up and down stairs and to sit at the dinner.’ Her advice to brides when it comes to choosing a dress? ‘Do a few squats in the dress just in case you need to do more than stand still for six hours.’

Millie took an unconventional approach to bridal headwear too, eschewing a traditional veil in favour of a turban. ‘We had to create a rushed turban to go with the dress because I cut and dyed my hair – very, very short and beige – a week before the wedding,’ she explains. Looking back now, she says, ‘I cannot believe I ever looked like that.’ 

"She felt pressured into an extravagant updo by a pushy hairdresser, who quickly put the kibosh on more natural looks."

NEVER UNDERDRESSED fashion director Ursula Lake was more considered about her wedding look, having planned the dress for years (we are, after all, an office of wedding-planning bridezillas). 

She remembers: ‘About a year after I started dating my then boyfriend, now husband, I started working at Conde Nast  where every month a copy of each of their magazines would be plopped on your desk, including Brides. I would always have a flick through and on one occasion I found a picture of the dress.'

It was Vivienne Westwood, a corset and a skirt, in ivory-coloured silk, and Ursula cut it out and kept it nestled in the pages of an old diary for eight years. She pretty much forgot about it but when she got engaged, she located the photo and realised it was still the dress in which she wanted to get married. 

But before she got around to buying the dress, she went to a friend’s wedding and ‘lo and behold, she was wearing that same dress. Gutted.’ (Even now, years later, Ursula recalls the events in remorseful and dramatic tones.) 

She still went to Vivienne Westwood for her dress but didn’t buy the dress that she had fantasised about for the best part of a decade. ‘My friend’s words ringing in my ears: “You’d better not get the same dress as me.”’ 

‘I compromised, not wanting to offend her and got a similar style to the one I had always wanted, but not exactly the same: the neckline, the reason I fell in love with the dress, was different. I never even tried on the one I really wanted, even though I knew it would have suited me more.’

Her friend got divorced the year she got married, somehow rendering the whole don’t-get-the-same-dress situation even sorrier. ‘Ten years on, it still hurts a little bit,’ she admits. 

A friend of mine, who works in the charity sector and got married last year, is more sanguine about any regrets. ‘I was totally happy with my ensemble on the day but I do somewhat wish I had tried out a few more options before settling on the hair and make-up I went with.’ 

She explains that she felt pressured into an extravagant updo by a pushy hairdresser (not her usual one but a hairdresser her wedding venue had put her in touch with), who quickly put the kibosh on more natural looks. ‘I thought a hair down-type style, which better reflected my naturally curly hair, would be nice but the hairdresser was very against it, as they like to control the curl and make sure your hair doesn't end up an out-of-control frizzy mess, which is probably fair enough, but I think maybe I should have at least tried out that style.’

She also regrets not having worn red lipstick (her usual occasion-wear look) – the venue-recommended make-up artist insisted on that more traditional 'glowy' bridal look of sheeny peach cheeks and pink lips – but Millie, who wore red lipstick on her 1988 wedding day, says it's a bad idea. 'I spent a good 15 minutes wiping it off my husband! Poor guy was covered in it.'  

"That’s the thing about wedding regrets: there are always going to be photos to remind you where you went wrong with your hair or made a misstep with your dress."

Another recent bride, Izzy Farnell, did exactly as she pleased with her hair, rejecting officious hairdressers and taking the job into her own hands. ‘In my mind, my hair would look perfectly coiffured and silky smooth,’ she says, ‘but in the end it was a very, very humid day and my hair was so thick that it just started to look frizzy. It wouldn't dry properly because I was getting more and more stressed.’ She ended up clipping it up some time around the meal. ‘When I look at the photos now, all I can see is the frizz.’

That’s the thing about weddings and wedding regrets: they’re always going to be well documented, there are always going to be photos to remind you where you went wrong with your hair or made a misstep with your dress.

The only way to deal with those niggles though is to find the joy in them and laugh them off and most remorseful brides can see the funny side.  

‘I actually take great pleasure in telling my story,’ Millie Kendall, who has since been divorced and remarried, says. ‘I don’t mind that I looked a bit hideous. I blame it on the era. I laugh! About the turban I wore and why.’ 

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