One of the hardest and most perilous tasks that any bride has to do is pick out the bridesmaids dresses for her closest friends and families. These dresses have a terrible reputation, and while everyone is excited to be a bridesmaid, most people immediately start to feel creeping dread about what theyre going to have to wear to the event. Even just the idea invokes negative feelings in many people, and its your job to make sure that you pick the perfect dress for everyone. Theres a lot of pressure to make sure that dress not only is pretty and representative of your taste and wedding themes, but also that it will look great on every girl who wears it. Chances are that all of your maids dont look exactly the same, so youll have to follow a few tips to ensure everyone ends up feeling good at the end of the day.

The first step to picking these dresses is actually pretty easy- you just need to figure out what youre going to wear when you get married. Your wedding dress sets the tone for the other dresses, as they need to match yours without overpowering it. If you wear an extremely formal dress, but then you pick out casual dresses for everyone else, then its going to create a really clashing image for your wedding party. Once you find your dress, or at least figure out the main aspects of what it will be like (how formal, what color, what style, what fabric), youll be able to start thinking about the others.

Your going to want to decide on the color first. Its relatively easy to flip through a book of swatches and find a color that matches the over all color scheme of the wedding dcor. Its not particularly easy to find a color that will look good with everyones skin tone. This is not an issue if everyone is basically the skin tone, but it can be real problem if you have a diverse line up. The same holds true for the size and type of figure of all your maids. If all of your girls are about the same size and build, then picking out a dress will be easy. In the real world, youre going to need to find a cut that is flattering to women of all shapes and sizes.

One way these problems have been solved is the emerging trend of bridesmaids wearing a series of matching separates. The overall look and cut of the pieces will be similar and will all be designed to look good together, but each girl can individualize her outfit according to what best matches her particular look.

And of course, there is always the easiest way to solve this problem- dont make anyone wear bridesmaid dresses! At the end of the day, its your wedding and you can make sure everyone is happy which ever way you want. If that means bribing each of them with a special bridesmaid gift (and the lead girl with an extra special maid of honor gift) then so be it. If that means letting everyone co-ordinate amongst themselves to figure out what they would like to wear, than that is a small price to pay to avoid the seemingly never-ending headache of finding one bridesmaid dress that is perfect for everyone.