The bride and her dress take front stage at the wedding. The gown should be a reflection of the bride's personality and highlight her best features. It is also important that the wedding dress compliment the decorating scheme and style of the event. Cost, as well, must play a part in deciding which bridal gown to purchase.

Trying to balance all these factors as you search for your wedding dress can be stressful. To help you get through the process as stress-free as possible, consider the following tips.

1. Set a Date to Choose Your Wedding Dress

Setting goals helps to give direction. Write down the date in your agenda or on a calendar. Working back from this date, set aside time for research and shopping. Knowing when you will decide will take the pressure off you to make a decision each time you see a dress that you think might be the one.

2. Collect Wedding Dress Ideas

Start a file or notebook where you can arquive ideas for your bridal gown. During the time you set aside for research, visit wedding web sites and thumb through bride magazine. Request catalogs from companies that sell wedding gowns. Take a look at the thousands of wedding gowns offered on eBay. Print or cut out pictures of those gowns that interest you and place them in your file or notebook.

3. Categorize Your Wedding Dress Options

A week or two before "D Day" (decision), separate the pictures you gathered into three groups: No, Maybe, Yes. When categorizing the wedding dresses, you need to ask yourself four questions.

Will this dress highlight my best physical features?
Does this gown compliment the style of my wedding?
Is the gown within my budget?
Do I really like this wedding dress?

If you answer "no" to any one of the questions above, place the gown in the "no" group. These can be immediately discarded. This should narrow down the choices quite a bit.

4. Ask Advice from People Whose Opinion You Trust

Show your pictures to a few people whom you trust and who you believe have a sense of style. It's like having your own talking mirror. Often, another person's perspective gives us new insights and helps us to make more informed decisions.

5. Try On Your Top Wedding Dress Choices

Set aside a day to try on several of your top wedding gown choices. You probably find that the way the gowns look in the pictures and the way they look on you is quite different. Be sure to take along a friend or relative to, once again, give you another point of view.

6. Choose Your Wedding Dress

Decision time has come. If you have followed through these steps, you probably have eliminated hundreds of options and narrowed your choices down to only a few. It is important to remember that there is no one wedding dress that is right for you. There are many gowns that could highlight your beauty, compliment your decorations and be within your budget.

Therefore, if you find yourself divided between one or more options, choose the one that you personally like the most. After all, it is your wedding.