I’m Pregnant ! When Should I Start Looking for My Wedding Dress

If you’re pregnant and planning to get married after giving birth, one of the biggest questions is when to start looking for your wedding dress.

Our advice is quite simple:

Either start looking relatively early in your pregnancy, ideally within the first three to four months or, if your wedding timeline allows it, wait until after you’ve had your baby.

Why? Because somewhere in between, choosing a wedding dress can become much more difficult.

I’m pregnant now but getting married after I give birth. When should I look for my dress?

If you’re still in the earlier stages of pregnancy — approximately the first three to four months — this can be a very good time to start.

Your body may already be changing, but you can usually still understand the proportions of a dress: where the waist sits, how a fitted silhouette looks, how the skirt falls and whether a particular shape suits you.

As the pregnancy progresses, this becomes much harder.

By six, seven, eight or nine months, your body has naturally changed considerably and your waist is no longer where it normally would be. It can be very difficult to look in the mirror and realistically imagine how that same wedding dress will look on you after giving birth.

And that’s important, because you’re not choosing a dress for the body you have while pregnant. You’re choosing it for the body you’ll have on your wedding day.

Is it better to wait until after I give birth?

If you are already well into your pregnancy and your wedding date gives you enough time, yes, waiting can make much more sense.

Once you’ve had your baby, we can see your body as it is then and choose your wedding dress accordingly.

Of course, this isn’t always possible.

Designer wedding dresses need time to be ordered and delivered, and alterations also need to be completed before the wedding. If your wedding is relatively soon after the birth, waiting until afterwards may leave too little time.

That’s why your due date and your wedding date need to be considered together.

I’m six to nine months pregnant. Should I still go wedding dress shopping?

You can certainly look, discover designers and begin thinking about the style you want.

But if you’re planning to marry after the birth, we would be careful about making decisions based purely on how a dress looks on you at that stage of pregnancy.

At six to nine months, you simply cannot accurately see how your body will look in that dress after pregnancy.

This is particularly true with fitted dresses or gowns where the waist and body proportions are an important part of the design.

What if I need to order my dress while I’m pregnant?

Sometimes the wedding timeline means we cannot wait.

In that case, we need to make an educated decision about the size we order.

A sensible starting point is usually the size you wore before pregnancy.

If we can already see that your body has changed considerably beyond the pregnancy itself and you’ve gained more weight overall, we may decide that one size above your usual size gives us a safer starting point.

But this isn’t something the bride should try to calculate herself. We look at your measurements, your usual size, how your body is changing, the particular designer and — very importantly — the construction of the dress.

What if I return to my previous size after giving birth?

That’s generally something we can work with.

If we’ve allowed enough room when ordering and you return closer to your pre-pregnancy measurements, the gown can be fitted back to your body during alterations.

This is why, when there is uncertainty, having some room to work with is generally safer than ordering a gown that may ultimately be too small.

The seamstress can take a dress in and shape it correctly to your body during your fittings.

What if I don’t return to my pre-pregnancy size?

That’s completely possible too, and it’s one of the reasons we plan carefully.

Nobody can predict exactly how a woman’s body will change during pregnancy or after giving birth.

Our job isn’t to guess what you should weigh by the wedding.

It’s to choose an ordering and alteration strategy that gives us the best possible flexibility for the body you actually have when the wedding approaches.

Should I wait until I lose the baby weight before choosing my wedding dress?

Not necessarily.

What matters most is how much time you have between giving birth and your wedding.

The practical question is different:

Do we have enough time to choose, order and alter your gown before the wedding?

If there is enough time after the birth to choose, order and alter your wedding dress, then waiting can be a very good option because we can see your body more realistically at that stage.

If there is not enough time, then we may need to choose and order the dress while you are still pregnant, using your pre-pregnancy size — or, if necessary, one size above — as a safe starting point.

The Brideswings Tip

If you’re pregnant now but getting married after giving birth, timing matters.

During approximately the first three to four months of pregnancy, you can usually still understand how different wedding-dress silhouettes and proportions work on your body.

Later in pregnancy, particularly around six to nine months it becomes much harder to realistically judge how a dress will look on you after the birth.

So don’t automatically wait until the end of your pregnancy to start looking.

Either start early, or if your wedding date allows it wait until after the baby is born.

And if the timeline means your dress needs to be ordered while you’re pregnant, don’t panic about predicting your exact future measurements. At Brideswings, we consider your pre-pregnancy size, how your body is changing, the designer and the gown itself, and leave the final precision to the alterations.

We don’t need to predict your body perfectly. We need to plan intelligently enough to fit the dress beautifully to you when the time comes.