Dresses displayed at a shop in Jizan. (Okaz photo)JIZAN: Prices of custom-made wedding and party dresses in Jizan have risen dramatically with the beginning of the school vacation and as the wedding season draws closer. Getting a dress is a great worry for girls and young women due to the increased cost of textiles and tailoring. The total cost for one dress can now exceed SR1,000, a 40-percent increase, from last season. The price of a meter of embroidered material is as much as SR150; and about four meters are needed to make a dress. Custom tailoring costs SR250 and adding shiny crystals boosts the price by another SR200. Prices of ready-made dresses have also risen, to between SR1,500 and SR3,000. Muhammad Iqbal, a tailor, attributed the rise in charges for custom-made dresses to the greater demand for tailoring services, which requires more staff and longer working hours. He said some dressmaking workshops stopped accepting orders about a month ago because of the demand for their services. Some girls and young women have resorted to renting dresses at prices ranging from SR500 to SR800 per night, Iqbal said. It costs between SR1,500 and SR2,500 to rent a bride's dress, he added. Iqbal said the wedding season is short and ends before the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.
