My quest to buy wedding dress for under £500 at Bicester Village

Wedding dress shopping: romantic fun or a great big bother? Could a bride on a budget, for whom the dream was wearing thin, find the answer in the cut-price designer dresses on sale at Bicester Village?

A bride choosing dresses. Photograph: Alamy

Counting sheep has been usurped. These days, as I lie awake at night, I see white dresses: flowing diaphanous fabric, little lace frocks, shimmering floor-length gowns. Because I am midway through wedding-dress shopping – and it is becoming quite a faff.

I started with a plan, a budget of £500 and an inherent unease with bridal shops. I was sure I could find something white, off the peg, that would do the job. Soon I realised how limited my options were. In general – at full price – £500 seems to buy the sort of dress a woman might wear to a smart lunch or the office, or a flimsy, irregularly stitched version of a proper gown. And so I started trawling for bargains on second-hand shopping sites, outlets and eBay, and checking and re-checking the Matches Fashion sale. As scrolling through pictures of white dresses on my iPhone occupied ever more of my waking hours, they started to float across my consciousness at night.
Could Bicester Village, in Oxfordshire, put an end to the impasse? An outlet store dedicated to discounted past-season designer fashion, it has one obvious advantage over online trawling: I could see the clothes, touch them, and try them on. And as shopping centres go, it’s very pleasant – the boutiques are arranged on an outdoor boulevard, so you’re not pummelled by air conditioning or blinded by bright lights.

Hannah Marriott trying on a Temperley dress Photograph: Hannah Marriott

First, I headed to Temperley – the upper-crust British label famous for kitting out boho brides – and found a range of white frocks, including a short ivory dress studded with crystals, a long-sleeved sequinned frock and a fluffy swan lake shift, which ranged from £300 to £600. They even had a traditional full-length ivory wedding gown, reduced by about 70% to just under £1,000, and a lace shrug at £250, about half the price charged by most bridal shops. In truth, none of the dresses felt quite right – either they didn’t fit or they weren’t quite the shape I had envisioned – but the possibilities, and the discounts, felt promising.

Valentino: the changing room of dreams Photograph: Hannah Marriott

My next stop was dream gown territory: Valentino. To a norm like me, the store felt properly luxe, with dresses hanging with a fistful of space between them, rather than tangled and jammed together, as I’m used to on the high street. I tried on some beautiful pieces, including a sample couture-level gown. The intricately beaded, inky-coloured show-stopper – reduced, er, to £7,000 – was never really an option, but swishing around in its heavy embellished skirts gave me a princess moment I hadn’t realised I wanted. More realistically, I tried two luxuriously thick, cream lace confections for under £1,000. Yes, my budget was going out of the window. But given that the average wedding dress costs around £1,400, and is certainly not Valentino, this would still be a win. Sadly, though, both were too big, and there were no other sizes in stock, which is often the way at Bicester.

Bicester by night. Photograph: Alamy

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that I am 5ft tall, the “too big” theme continued: Dolce & Gabbana’s glamorous black-lacquered store looked promising, with rows and rows of knee-length white lace dresses in strapless, shift and long-sleeved styles, but none were my size. And so it was in Celine (white shift dress with orange piping, around £600) Versace (long, slinky white dress with Greek key-pattern embroidery on the straps, under £250) and Bottega Veneta (milk-coloured midi-length halterneck, £235). And so I left feeling much more confident about what suited me - but empty-handed, nevertheless.
At Valentino, the shop assistant told me that she had sold an all-white sample-gown in my size just that morning. In Temperley, there was a near-miss, too, with an all-white embellished maxi dress snaffled by a bride the previous day. Clearly, Bicester Village shopping is all about chance – so narrowing your requirements to one item in one colour is a tricky brief. The best bet? Take a trip there for bridesmaids’ dresses or wedding shoes (Jimmy Choos for £250!) and have a casual look for white gowns while you do. You might just get lucky.