Say Yes to the Dress

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

An American reality television show on TLC about Kleinfeld Bridal, a salon in the Big Applesauce, and more specifically, the women shopping there for their wedding dresses, and the employees trying to balance the brides' egos, budgets and families. A Guilty Pleasure if ever there was one.


Tropes used in Say Yes to the Dress include:
  • Age-Inappropriate Dress: Many of the dresses tried on by the older brides are more appropriate for 20-year-olds.
  • Beautiful All Along: How many women feel while trying on the dresses. Your Mileage May Vary.
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Many of the brides, despite most being in their 20s or older.
  • Bridezilla
  • Camp Gay: Randy, the style consultant.
  • Conspicuous Consumption: One gets this vibe from the $20,000 dresses.
  • Daddy's Girl
  • Dysfunctional Family: Money doesn't buy happiness or stability, kids.
  • Extreme Doormat: A few of the women, most notably one who was purchasing a gown for her vow renewal ceremony ended up buying a dress she hated instead of the one she loved because she couldn't stand to disappoint her 8-year-old sons.
    • Or a young (late teens early 20s) bride who was sad because her grandmother kept bitching at her dress choices.
  • Fairytale Wedding Dress
  • Gem-Encrusted
  • Happily Ever After: The show usually ends with pictures from the featured brides' weddings.
  • Insistent Terminology: They're consultants, not saleswomen.
  • It's All About ME!: Many of the brides. More distressingly, some of the bride's families.
    • One distresing example was when when a young woman brought in her mother and stepmother (both of whom were very important to her). The mother took every time the woman liked anything the stepmother said as a snub while the stepmother backed off quickly and tried to be nice no matter what the dress was (aka which mother picked it).
  • My Beloved Smother: Some of the mothers of the bride.
  • No Accounting for Taste
  • Pimped-Out Dress
  • Put on a Bus: Most of the saleswomen are featured for several episodes and never heard from again.
  • Rich Idiot With No Day Job
  • Serious Business
  • Spin-Off: They now have a whole second show (or was it just a special set of 20 or episodes?) about bigger brides--usually size 12 and up. Those episodes had even more about "the right fit" and showing how to mitigate/play up parts of your body.
    • They have another spin-off called Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • And now Say Yes to the Dress Bridesmaids, where the brides need to be reminded that it's their wedding and they can pick any bridesmaids dresses they want, or that you can get nice dresses in weird colors, or that it's the bride's day not yours, etc. Or that automatically making your sister the maid of honor doesn't mean she'll be mice to you.
  • Spoiled Brat: About half the brides.
    • And half the families sometimes.
  • Spoiled Sweet: The other half of the brides.
  • Stripperific: Most of the gowns by designer Pnina Tornai are low-cut, transparent, and covered in rhinestones.
  • Your Mileage May Vary: Some of the women have... unique taste.
    • Like the bride who wanted a short dress so you'd see her cowgirl boots.