{Personal Photo: Flower Market, Hong Kong March 2012}
Although not as cheap as Mainland China, I'm much more familiar with the Hong Kong landscape. I was excited to arrive for a bevy of reasons - mostly eating, shopping, and wedding dress hunting! If you've never been to Hong Kong, be prepared for a whirlwind adventure!
I generally stay on the Kowloon side, as I feel the Hong Kong side is more Westernized and expensive. I like little hole-in-the-wall restaurants (the dirtier the better!) and Hong Kong cafe food...oh my, the best! It's a glorious mix of Western food and Chinese and 'other'.
{Personal Photos: (L) Baked pork chop rice; (R) Dun nai, a cold, steamed milk dessert, very unique to HK/Macau/Southern China}
{Personal Photos: (L) HK Style Milk Tea (I'm a huuge connoisseur of HK milk tea!); (R) Lap mei fan, preserved meats in a hot clay pot with rice}
Pigging out aside, I was a woman on a mission! The wedding industry is booming in HK; there are entire MALLS dedicated to nothing but weddings. There was one right by our hotel, so my mom and I went there almost everyday, scouring for just the right dress. Tiny boutiques are crammed into the 6 story building, with levels dedicated to just wedding stationary, favors, dresses, and flowers.
Well, with those kind of options, it should be easy to find what I wanted, right? Er...not exactly...
Shop after shop, they had nothing but the exact dresses I didn't want - the dreaded Cupcake Princess dresses. Not to poo-poo on them or anything, it's just not my style. It seemed every dress was not only humongous, but also decked out in lace, ribbons, sequins, rhinestones, bows, and flowers. It was too much! According to many of the shop owners, women in HK prefer this kind of style because they usually have their weddings inside hotels and grand ballrooms, so "they want to feel like a princess when the spotlight is on them." The shops were very proprietary over people taking pictures so unfortunately I can't show you what it all looked like in there, but below is, what I can only assume, the general aesthetic of the Hong Kong woman:
{Source: Alibaba.com; Dress: Avril Bridal Wedding Gown Co., Ltd}
{Source: bizrice.com; Dress: Hong Kong Zhengtian Industrial Co., Ltd}
There was also something inherently cutesy and 80's prom vibe happening with a lot of the dresses that just didn't suit me at all. I went into each shop, looked around, then showed the shop owner some inspiration photos, to which they promptly told me they didn't have anything like that in the store. Now to be fair, I'm sure Hong Kong has a wide range of wedding dresses and if I just went to some of the nicer boutiques (or even a couple of other malls) I could well find what I was looking for, but after trolling a couple of enormous malls for a week I was about ready to give up.
Finally, FINALLY, nearing the end of my trip, on a whim we went to one last wedding mall and the first boutique owner told me, "Well, we don't have any of those kinds of dresses here, but we make all of our dresses. If you can tell me what you want, we can make it for you."
WHAT THE WHAT
This was perfect!! I quickly gathered the bits I loved about a few dresses and we worked out a design. Again, I thought I would be having an outside ceremony so I wanted the dress to be as casual as possible, bringing the seamstress close to tears as I kept refusing to add even a little bit of lace or beading anywhere (the tricky minx added a little on there anyway!). In hindsight, I should have researched my dresses a bit more, as there are a lot of elements I'm seeing now that I wish I could have in my dress. Oh well! Below are the three pictures I gave her for my composite dress:
{Source: Pinterest: Barbara Verneus - Covenant Union}
I wanted the dress to the left's draping of chiffon
{Source: Pinterest; Fuckyeahweddingideas}
I absolutely fell in love with this kind of drooping fabric sleeves but I wanted straps to hold it up so...
Ultimately, I wanted the overall dress to look like the one to the far right
What do you think? Too simple of a dress? Next time, on the final installation of Quest for the Dress - I'll show you the actual dress! Did you have any trouble finding your wedding dress? Let me hear your struggles and triumphs~
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