Looking Tall on The Wedding Day (at least, for the photos)

I was just looking through some photos by my awesome photographers (our two good friends took all the good photos, and one of them + my husband is processing them) and I realized — I looked really good and really TALL for the wedding! I mean, I still looked petite if my husband is right next to me, but the proportions are all nice and long and made me look very slim, and I didn’t even wear a very high heel (less than 3 inches! That was funny because I actually had leg/feet cramps half way through the wedding and had to change into a flat flipflop to walk around and dance). And analyzing my dress, these are the few things that I think helped me look tall, slim, and proportionate:

• I bought a Petite size! You can hem a dress all you want, it still wont look good if the waist is 3 inches lower than where your waist is. (Or really, make your own! 😉 )
• the dress had a train — from the back, it make you look soooo much taller! It created an illusion that my leg is thaaaaaat long
• the dress had straps — originally my dress was strapless, and it made me look a little shorter since the height of white fabric from top to bottom was cut short. By adding straps, the eyes are reminded of the portion above my chest/back and hence made me seem slimmer (especially from the backside!) If I had more time or if my husband didnt love straps so much, I would had added laces to cover my upper back and chest to see if that made me look even taller!
• well fitted dress — I took in a little, but not too much from the side, so that the dress fit snuggly but not tight enough to show any bulges — creating a straight un-disrupted curve and made me look slimmer
• strategically hemmed hemline — I hemmed it so that it just touches the ground when I am on my heels. This way it doesnt look like I was on my heels and again, made me look taller! But dont hem it too long such that the skirt folds near the ground, a dead giveaway! (I think mine could had been half an inch shorter).
• A-line and empire waist dress — every where I looked, advice says that A-line and waist dress makes you look taller. I guess its true! My dress is a very slim A-line and fitted near the hips and flare out gently — slightly mermaid-y but not really, because I know I look very short in mermaid dresses!
• great photographers and wide-angled lens – this has nothing to do with my dress, but it did help greatly. The two photographers shot from great angles (down to up) that flattered me, and one of them used wide-angled lens, which elongates my body when it was shot with my face/upper body in the center and my train/feet area at the edge of the photo. Think of all those tricky mirrors that made you look slightly slimmer in store just because of the way they were placed on the floor (faced upwards a little).

One thing I would advice all the short brides — bring some safety pins to your wedding and a flat comfy shoe! If your feet cannot take it due to lack of sleep, excitement, or whatever reasons, you can always use safety pins to bustle all around the skirt to make it shorter. My big snap buttons did not hold too well, so safety pins would have helped! Practice bustling with a girlfriend so that she can help you out during the wedding, and mark the points you want to bustled so that you dont take too long figuring it all out!

P.S. Our friends and my husband ARE available as wedding photographers in Seattle and San Francisco Bay Area. If anyone wants to consider hire them (they would charge much less than normal since they are just starting out, $$ is just used to cover travel expenses, equipment and slight motivation for the massive amount of time spent on post processing), feel free to leave me a comment and I will provide their contact info!