Find The Prefect Wedding Dress For Your Special Day (Secrets From Our 90 DAYS TO HUSBAND No. 2 Guru!)

By Samantha Bessuedo Drucker | August 29, 2018 | Food Fashion Style

New York Fashion Week is just a week away! To kick things off, resident Image Gal – Samantha Bessuedo Drucker – who met her husband in 90 days – tells us how to get the perfect wedding dress.

After 20 years as an image consultant helping people find their look and get ready for their wedding, all of a sudden, it was I who needed “The Dress” — along with a few other outfits and accessories! I felt my professional reputation was about to be scrutinized. I needed to become my own best client and fast! To make matters more challenging, I found myself overseas for the first four months of this year, making it impossible to have the necessary time to find a dress in NY and have it made.

I looked everywhere. My taste is impeccable and often expensive by default. It happens to me all the time. I go into a store, scan it with my laser vision, see a tiny bit of fabric peeking out from a rack on the other side of the room. I run over and take it off the rack before anyone else can. I have selected the most expensive item they have. Never fails. However, my wedding festivities were many and spanned the globe. I needed a lot of outfits. Therefore I had to try to be strategic with my budget and what I purchased. New York, Boston, Miami, Bogota. I could not find anything that met my criteria.

The criteria for my wedding dress included:

1. Must be amazing.

2. Must be amazing on me.

3. Must be able to wear it again! I’m not paying a small fortune for a dress I can only have a good time in once!

4. Same goes for shoes. I wanted to find the perfect shoes and be able to enjoy them till they fall apart someday.

5. Within my budget.

6. I needed several dresses for a multi-part wedding with a lot of smaller celebrations before and after the “Main Event.”

7. Dress must be perfect for the venue and theme of the event.

While I was In Cartagena before traveling to Bogota, I was introduced to a designer who is a mutual friend of a cousin and of my mother. He has three stores in Colombia and he is very famous for dressing the society ladies, Miss Colombias and other celebrities.

The day I was Introduced to Mariano of Mariano Inc., it was love at hello. He just got me.

I said, “This is my second time. I don’t want something princess or lacy or virginal. No one will believe it anyway. I need to be me at my most fabulous and glamorous self.” That night, we all went to the “Diner en Blanc” Party in Cartagena. He studied my personality that night and understood me even more.

I went into his magical little boutique. We started designing the dress by exploring different silhouettes in his shop. The dress would be original and one of a kind made just for me! After the exploratory session, I had a fitting. Appointments two, three and four would be in Bogota. Two weeks later at my second fitting, I had already dropped a size!

Mariano started to become concerned. He told me he was going to cut it slightly smaller as he felt I would continue to lose weight and did not want the dress to be too big.

Now I was concerned. I would return to the states to wait for this dress to come with no way to take it in and NO way to take it out. It was no more food for me…

And so worth it! I love the dress and the concept: sexy, red carpet meets wedding to showcase my Divalicious self. Something that “activated my sexy and ignited my inner Beauty Queen to saunter gracefully down the aisle yet with the essence of my fierce Leo self. Mariano made me feel pretty – he truly saw me. There were no false compliments given in order to sell a dress. It was real. Mariano was on my team and wanted me to win! He wanted to come to the wedding and dress me himself. But it was a family wedding and I had already exceeded my share for seats on the boat.

Here it is, without further adieu – my wedding dress!

Being sewn into it for a flawless fit.