- Am I in focus?
I got glasses recently,
and I can't now tell if I'm in focus or not.
My name is Clare.
If you're new here, I'm a YouTuber from Ireland.
I was on the Irish version of Say Yes to the Dress.
So if you don't know what Say Yes to the Dress is,
it's a reality TV show where brides go on,
they try on a couple dress, and they say yes to one.
It's pretty simple.
I was on the Irish version of this,
and a couple of people have asked me
why I didn't wear the dress I said yes to on my wedding day,
so I thought that I would tell you why.
To start, I have to go back a little bit further
than the actual show.
I got engaged in the summer, August 2016 I think.
For like six months I didn't even think about
organizing a wedding, I was just enjoying being engaged.
Then around January 2018
we started to look at venues,
we booked a venue in February,
and then I thought, right,
now I've got to start lookin' at dresses.
Now, the couple of times at first
that I went to Dublin boutiques
I went in and they said things like,
pick out designs, or shapes, or whatever that you like
and then we'll get you to try them on,
but when they do it that way you can end up putting on
something that's way out of your price range,
so I learned to go in and say,
don't show me anything over this amount of money.
I remember I was in one of the first boutiques
and I was trying on a dress.
I didn't actually really like the design of the dress,
but I remember thinking, geez,
this would be a good dress to move around in all day,
and I said to the woman, how much is this dress?
And she was like, oh that's 4,500.
And I was like, oh my God, get it off me.
I really hated the whole wedding dress
searching for one process,
the trying it on, I hated it all.
If you don't fully buy into the whole wedding thing
from the very start,
which is something I probably shoulda done,
but it's just a real awkward experience.
You go in, you try on a few dresses, you leave.
You know what I mean?
So if you're not fully invested
it's really not an enjoyable experience,
at least I didn't find it enjoyable at all.
A long time before I got engaged,
in my Pinterest travels I believe it was,
I stumbled across a Buzzfeed article called
something like 10 crop top wedding dresses
that will make you die (laughs) or something.
I spotted one crop top wedding dress in there that I loved,
and I clicked through to find where it came from,
and I found an Etsy page called Wardrobe By Dulcinea.
Now that's 100% pronounced wrong.
I remember that I followed her on Etsy
and completely forgot about her then for ages.
After I got engaged,
in the shop I looked through all the dresses,
nothin' really was for me.
It wasn't until summer 2017
that I spotted an ad somewhere online,
they were lookin' for women to do Say Yes to the Dress.
There was a really quick turnaround on this.
I did an interview on my own in August,
and then my bridesmaid, Lorraine,
also did an interview with me.
I'm here in Dublin with my best friend Lorraine,
and we just finished a Skype call for Say Yes to the Dress.
- Yeah, it went really well.
- And we were just sayin', like--
- We're normal. (laughs)
- We think we have a good shot,
we're very likable. (laughs) - Yeah, it was good.
- And then we knew within a week that we got it
and we were on our way to Cork to film it in September.
I just had to go into a shop there to find a tape measure
so I can measure myself,
'cause I have to send my measurements off today
to Say Yes to the Dress.
You won't see this footage for quite some time,
it might be in London,
at, well it's a cold summer's day,
and you will have seen this vlog
long before you see this piece of footage.
But yeah, peggin' it around today
tryin' to get the agreement printed
and then (mumbles) and I have to run around the shops
trying to find this little thing
so I could measure my bust, and waist, and hips, and yeah.
So it's feelin' a bit more real now.
Well, I knew I didn't want a white dress,
and people have asked me why I didn't want a white dress,
and I honestly don't know the answer there,
I just knew that I didn't want a white dress.
Yeah, I was like, I want something mental,
and she was like, would you consider something non-mental?
And Lorraine was like, don't worry,
I'll make her consider something non-mental.
And then the woman was like, hmm, interesting, oh yeah.
The time was coming up to shoot Say Yes to the Dress,
I knew that I was on Say Yes to the Dress.
Between when we found out we did it
and when we were shootin'
was about three weeks or a month, maybe,
so I knew that I was on it,
and I knew that when you sign up you have to sign up
that you're actually lookin' for a weddin' dress,
blah blah blah.
Just before that happened,
Wardrobe By Dulcinea put up a picture
of a dress called the Dolores wedding dress.
I remember the first time that I saw the dress.
I was like,
who would want to wear that? (laughs)
It's so weird.
I was like, yeah, I mean it's kinda cool,
but like, I don't know, it's a bit weird.
But then I couldn't stop thinkin' about the dress.
But for some reason,
that night I genuinely could stop thinking about Dolores.
I was awake all night just thinkin' about that dress,
and I just kept tellin' myself, like,
I need to drop this, because that's not my dress,
I have to go to Say Yes to the Dress and pick a dress,
so, like, get over it.
So we went down to Say Yes to the Dress,
I tried to put Dolores out the back of my mind,
and we had a great time on Say Yes to the Dress,
everyone was so lovely.
Which, I tried on, I think it was,
was it four or five weddin' dresses,
so you try on a dress in the dressing room,
you kinda talk to the people, whatever, you come out,
you stand there, you get your critique,
and sometimes things need to be re-shot,
and so it's, for the most part it's fluid,
but it does take a lot longer than a normal dress fitting.
So we were there for a couple of hours,
I'd tried on I think four or five dresses,
and I had submitted beforehand,
they had asked me to, like a big sort of thing
about my style and what style of dress I was goin' for
and I had specifically said
I wanted a colored dress and that I wanted a crop top dress,
and they had said to me previously
before me getting down there that they weren't gonna be able
to accommodate a colored dress.
The short time frame,
and it was just such an unusual request,
that they weren't going to be able
to get in any colored wedding dresses,
but that they would absolutely, like,
they would be able to accommodate the crop top one,
'cause it's very in style, so that was fine.
I knew going down there that I wasn't going to be able
to try on any colored wedding dresses.
This point I had settled on blue, by the way,
so when I got to the fourth, I think it was,
wedding dress in Say Yes to the Dress
it was the first crop top, first two-piece I'd tried on,
it was a crop top and skirt,
and the skirt was a chiffon skirt.
Now, the skirt was beautiful,
like I could've moved in that thing all night,
it was fantastic, just swishy and swirly, it was amazing.
The top I didn't love,
but it was because it was much too big on me
and it was being pinned in.
I couldn't picture it fittin' me properly.
Behind the scenes,
I said, would I be able to get
this particular skirt in blue,
and leave the top white, but get the chiffon skirt in blue,
and the woman told me that she was positive,
she was sure that that wouldn't be a problem.
In my head the whole time that I'm trying on this dress
I'm thinkin', you know, imagine the bottom half in blue.
There was a lot of talk
about this blue wedding dress on the day,
but that obviously didn't make the final cut.
The price point was right,
the movement in the dress was right,
the skirt was definitely lovely,
and I still kinda sometimes am like,
oh, God, it would've actually been so much easier
to wear that skirt on my wedding day
'cause it had some movement in it,
and I found the tulle kind of tripped me up a bit,
but there was somethin' in me that I was like,
I'm just not 100% there, like I'm 99% there on this dress.
But they asked me the question,
do you say yes to this dress,
and they kinda cut short my answer,
but what I actually said was, I'm really nervous,
my mother always told me to go home
and sleep on something before you make a decision this big,
but I guess that I'll have to say yes.
So they cut it to me just saying I have to say yes,
which I totally would've done as well, no shade.
The woman who worked in the place
wanted me to pay immediately,
and I didn't have that kinda money on me,
so I was ringing Alex to get the credit card,
and he was like, you need to take a day or two
to just think about it, because, you know,
you've been in there for hours, you want to go home.
He was like, just take a day or two to think about it.
I had said to her beforehand,
could we agree to a 48 hour cooling off period?
'Cause my biggest fear
was that I would just say yes to a dress to sort of,
because there is a pressure on Say Yes to the Dress
to say yes to a dress, I didn't wanna be the only bride
that said no to a dress, do you know what I mean?
I didn't wanna let anyone down, either,
so I really wanted to say yes, and Alex kinda knew that,
so he had said it to me beforehand,
and I had said it to the woman,
could we really do a 48 hour cooling off period
while I think about it?
So then I said to her, right,
I'm going to ring you and pay you over the phone
in the next couple of days, I just need to think about it,
just wanna make sure I made the right decision for me,
and she's like, right, okay.
So I went home,
and I showed a lot of people.
Not a lot of people, I showed a good few people
the two dresses that were tearing me apart,
the Say Yes to the Dress dress and Dolores,
and everybody that I showed the two to
preferred the white dress,
and honest to God I actually think
that pushed me further in the direction of Dolores.
I was very, not anti-wedding,
but I really, really resented
the traditional aspects of the wedding,
so the more people said, oh you should go with the white one
the more I pulled back from it.
But I was afraid to say that,
because I had said yes to a dress
and I was like, right, I'm gonna have to follow through now,
so like, whatever, fuck it,
and then I called the shop
and talked to the dress designer,
and the dress designer actually told me
that the skirt couldn't be made in blue.
Honest to God I was kinda like, hallelujah,
this is my exit strategy.
So I said, listen, I'm not gonna go through with this dress,
we had talked about it, the skirt goin' in blue,
and I've talked to the designer now
and she says the skirt cannot go in blue,
so that's a deal-breaker for me.
The woman in the shop was like,
well you're gonna have to tell RTE.
And I rang the production company
and told them the same thing,
and to be fair the woman in the production company
was so lovely about it, she was like,
look, we want to make a good show
but at the end of the day it's your weddin' day.
Let us know if there's anythin' we can do,
like is there anythin' we can do
to make this dress work for you, or whatever?
I basically just kinda said, no, not really,
because I knew that I wanted an out and this was my out.
After that, then, is when I embarked
on the entire process
of buying my wedding dress on Etsy.
That's a whole other story for a whole other video.
Give this video a like if you wanna see that video,
or let me know in the comments down below.
The show also aired, by the way, before my wedding.
I said to the production company, look,
I'm not gonna tell anyone that I didn't go with this dress,
and they were like, great.
So it aired as planned,
all was good.
It aired twice before my wedding,
and it aired recently again. (laughs)
They're getting great mileage out of it, it's amazin'.
A lot of my friends saw the show
and they were all expecting at my wedding
me to walk out in my white, you know,
Say Yes to the Dress dress.
So they all had a lot of questions
as to why I wasn't wearing it.
Also I just wanna add one thing here.
When we had done our interview process,
I had done an interview on my own
before I did an interview with my bridesmaid,
and the interview on my own,
one of the questions put to me was,
why do you want to be on Say Yes to the Dress?
And I said, because I want to be on television.
So I feel like I didn't mislead anyone.
I didn't end up going with the dress,
but I was very clear from the start
that it wasn't about the love of dresses for me,
I wanted to be on television. (laughs)
She even said, I admire your honesty.
I have a couple of other videos
on the experience of being on Say Yes to the Dress
and the backstage footage from Say Yes to the Dress.
It was an amazing experience,
and there was a couple of things from the day
I actually did wear on my wedding day,
and I wanna talk about that more in a video dedicated
to kind of all the small details of my wedding.
But basically Franc, the host of the show,
he had said to me before we were leaving,
he was like, I want to give you a little gift.
He's like, I think that you're really creative
and I think that no matter what you do on your wedding day
you're gonna do something really unique and different.
I really appreciated that,
it was such a lovely thing for him to say,
and he gave me a bracelet, that like, it's a very long,
it's long, metal lines with pearls at the end,
and you basically bend it around your wrist
to suit your wrist, and two diamond earrings,
so it was, you know, drop earrings.
So I wore all of those on my wedding day,
I wore the bracelet and the earrings on my wedding day,
and they were absolutely beautiful,
thank you so much, Franc.
And thank you to everyone at Say Yes to the Dress
for having me, I'm sorry that I didn't wear the dress,
but it was a brilliant experience all the same,
and sure, it's a good old story,
and more conversation pieces,
because everyone was sick of talkin'
about Say Yes to the Dress,
and then everyone wanted to know
why I didn't wear the dress, so I just got
a second round of conversation out of it. (laughs)
If you could give this video a like
if you want me to keep makin' videos,
because I know that I've been absent for a while
and I'm trying to get back into it,
and I'm wondering if I should or shouldn't.
Please subscribe, and I'll see you soon.
Bye, bye-bye.