Designer Bridal Room, Pavilion KL

A mailer arrived in my inbox early yesterday morning, announcing the start of Designer Bridal Room's first ever sample sale today. Now, THIS sample sale was something I was keen on because this bridal house is completely unlike the proliferation of your traditional Malaysian-type wedding houses, which rent out their gowns for brides to wear at their dinner or for photoshoots.

Not only does Designer Bridal Room carry designer gowns (the name's quite self-explanatory right), they do not rent them out at all, hence the samples are in great quality because every bride that orders a gown from them will have hers made new from scratch by the designer overseas.

No such thing as altering and re-altering the gown, thank heavens. While bridal salons like this exist everywhere overseas in the US / UK, I find it real weird that DBR is probably the only of its kind here. We mostly have to go to SS2 or individual designers' boutiques like Carven Ong etc etc.

So in an effort to live up to the name bridezilla, I emailed AND called to ensure I got one of the earliest slots for the sale that started today 23rd August to 8th September. And when I entered, I felt really relieved that I insisted on an earlier slot because from what I saw there were only 2 racks of sample gowns, one at 50% off and the other at 70% off (average about 20-30 gowns per rack). 

The more unconventional gown shapes, colors and materials like beaded sheath and swathed chiffon and champagne colors were under the 70% discount rack. I think the 50% rack will clear off much faster as they had nicer satins and laces, with more A-lines / trumpets and 1 or 2 really beautiful looking mermaids. But that's just my personal opinion. Unfortunately the colored evening dresses were NOT on sale.

Brand-wise I saw mostly San Patricks, La Sposas, Pronovias', Lusan Mandongus. According to the saleslady, all generally from the 2010 and 2011 collections.

Pricing-wise, those at 70% discount would cost about RM4-5k (as the above 3 names usually average at RM12-15k normal price), and at 50% discount, between RM6-8k. The first bride before me (I got the 2nd slot) bought a dress, and I managed to as well, given we were the first few in.

Since my wedding photoshoot and actual wedding is only next year, I'll only be returning to the salon sometime in April / May for my fittings and alterations. I feel abit sad that the gown search is over so soon, but I suppose I got a designer gown at really good value that I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. I just hope the fiance likes it more and more - he didn't look quite that impressed, but then again, he's the type that needs things to grow on him. :) 
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Some pictures of the inside of the salon - unfortunately no pictures allowed, so I had to take this off DBR's facebook page. However, once you buy a dress, they allow you to take pictures of your own dress. I find this somewhat pretentious and annoying, because 1) i can find pictures of these dresses online, anyway and 2) some bridal shops overseas allow you to snap photos of a few favourite dresses because you need to know how you look in a photo. But anyway, its 50-50 on this one. Some salons do, some don't.