Choosing the right wedding dress for your figure

You've been to a few expos and flipped through all your bridal magazines.

You might have also spent hours on the internet looking at photo after photo, while thinking to yourself: "Well that dress is nice, but I'd never be able to pull that off".

And suddenly, the confusion kicks in. How do you choose the right dress when there's just so many?

Identify your body shape

Are you an apple, pear, hourglass or tube?

The first step to choosing the right gown is to know your body's shape.

Think Trinny and Suzanne from the What Not to Wear TV series from the BBC.

They not only inspected wardrobes, but they assessed their client's body shape first and foremost before dishing out any kind of style advice.

This is because knowing your body shape is the key to knowing what will look good on you.

Now everyone is different of course, but generally speaking, females usually fall into one of the four main body shapes that you can see in the image to your left. Determine your body shape by choosing which one closely resembles yours in the picture.

By following the next step in this guide, you will soon be able to tell the difference between gowns which are made specifically for your body shape, and which gowns aren't.

"The problem is that women try to dress like celebrities whose shape they just don't have," fashion guru, Trinny Woodall, told the New Zealand Herald.

"When you emulate someone else's dress sense with a different body shape it just doesn't work."

"And when you look bad, your confidence dips," Trinny said.

Now on to Part 2: Wedding dress styles for every body shape.