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.

Westin KL - The One

I must say, the search for the hotel venue was pretty painless. We hadn't yet engaged a wedding planner but still managed to sign and seal the deal to book the Westin KL in less than a month.

Although to be quite frank, we didn't bother with other hotels at all save for a cursory sniff around Mandarin Oriental (and we all know how THAT one turned out). Due to some parental controls in place (ie boo to Selangor state hotels), we had to stick to KL 4-5 star hotels. My personal opinion was that KL Hilton wasn't good value and Shangri-La was pure overpriced snobbery ala MO but with more dated banquet facilities.

Gold, black, deep wine red, all mashing together in one Shang ballroom. Kill me now.

On the other hand, Westin seemed just right from the start. Nice banquet manager (a jolly-looking accomodating type called Chester, whom we privately call Chestnut), cosy ballroom (45 tables max, but 40 tables would be comfortable), and very flexible in altering the contract terms per our request, and throwing more freebies into the package.

Here's some of the extras we negotiated for above the standard contract:-

1) To allow us free corkage for 2 bottles of liquor per table instead of just wine
2) One extra free hotel room (we now get 3 rooms + 1 bridal suite)
3) Free tea ceremony venue in one of the meeting rooms + tea and refreshments for 30pax
4) Flexibility to switch the soups into sharksfin soup at no extra charge 
5) Accrual of Starwood points from our wedding expenditure
6) 6 flower stands instead of 4
7) More flexible payment terms with larger back-loaded amount on the wedding day

If choosing a hotel was akin to making a marriage match, I'd say we were just about suited for Westin like how Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas suit each other. Beautiful, classy fit, EXCEPT for his shocking mane of brown-bronzey waggley locks which look like it needs a real big brush taken to it.

That was exactly how I felt when we viewed the ballroom itself. Can you see that weird spiky brown monstrosity sticking out of the ceiling?

Apparently it's art. Chestnut could see it on our faces, and hurried to defend his spiky brown monstrosity by saying it looks good with the spotlights, and he suggested we not drape the ceiling otherwise the effect would be lost.

Damn him, how did he know we were thinking of doing exactly just that?!!

Below is the standard Westin Weddings signage, but I've commissioned a good friend to design our couple logo (for lack of a better word). And we've decided to be cheeky and not put our names up, instead just a J&J. This is so we can sneakily enjoy the uncomfortable looks of guests who barely know us and who we barely know (but were arm-twisted forced persuaded to invite) when they try to sneak a look at the stage to learn our names when greeting us. *evil cackle*

 Westin also offers a variety of table linen designs, in sand and pearl colors. I initially didn't want dark tablecloths, but after seeing them at one wedding (as below), it's starting to grow on me. This bears a further think in coming days.