Vancouver hosts first-ever South Asian Bridal Fashion Week

A once-in-a-lifetime experience for a bride requires highly-skilled makers to design a one-of-a-kind dress, and some of these perfectly designed dresses were on display in Canada's coastal city of Vancouver at the first-ever South Asian Bridal Fashion Week, held recently (April 8-10, 2016).

The three-day fashion show and expo, including more than 20 top international designers attracted hundreds of brides from Vancouver's large South Asian community, Xinhua reported.

They were here looking for unique bridal gowns from many top designers, including several from India.

Jai Singh, Bridal Week organiser, said brides nowadays want everything because they are more exposed and know the Western as well as the Indian trends. So, a bride now wants everything in one garment.

South Asian weddings are famously known as massive events. Even in Canada, they can often last several days, involving hundreds — if not thousands — of guests.

One local bridal gown-seller, Jas Chauhan, said such events and brides demand a customised dress that would not be replicated or even seen elsewhere.

"You want to be that one-of-a-kind bride. You don't want to be that bride that you know, you walk into a reception five years down the road, maybe a couple months down the road, and you see another bride that has a very similar outfit," Chauhan said.

However, making a South Asian bridal gown is no easy task, said one bridal gown designer, Tina Bhardwaj, who is visiting Vancouver from New Delhi. They often require a small army of highly-skilled dress-makers and a lot of patience.

"Everything that you see here is done by hand so it takes much longer than most of the other outfits. So it's hand embroidery on a cart, and there are about six to eight people working on it, and it could go on for two weeks, it could go on for three, it could even take a month, sometimes a month and a half," Bhardwaj said.

When it comes to the right one-of-a-kind bridal gown, there is really no limit to how much money one can spend on it, as a unique dress tends to have a unique price.