How to be a Google Search Champion : Wedding Dress Edition

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest.
Love: 100 wedding dress pictures all in one spot, and easily accessed from my phone or any computer.
Hate: pictures that are linked to a tumblr or a knock-off dress site that gives me no info on the real dress!

I've been pinning every kind of dress shape and style onto my board "Dresses - All Shapes & Styles" (I know, you're trying hard to keep up with my wit).  The plan is to show them to Sphinx to gauge his interest in wedding dress styles.  I'm pinning all kinds of dresses to throw him off the trail of what I'm really zeroing in on - but here's what I do when I find a dress that is worth the effort to get more details!

Say I'm scrolling through Pinterest on my phone and come across this dress:

And I love it! But the caption just says "perfect wedding dress!!" And the link leads me to a dead end.  So what do we do? Reverse search that dress!

Go to google.com. Click on the images tab.  And instead of typing something in, press the little camera button in the search bar.

You can upload the picture if you save it (which I have had better luck with) or use the picture URL.  Sometimes when you take a picture URL from Pinterest, it isn't able to be searched. Go figure.

And Google will use its magic to search for that picture on the internet, and here's what we get:

How amazing is that? It's also a sign that computers are going to take over the world, but let's ride this while we can!

Google says the dress is the Wtoo "Natalia" by Watters.  And sure enough it is! And I can use the Watters  site to see if there are any stores near me that carry the Wtoo line.  Win!

But let's take that one step further..how much is this dress? And one picture isn't very helpful.  I want to see more!

My advice is to look up the exact dress or the Wtoo brand on a site like tradesy.comor preownedweddingdresses.com.  Even if you don't use those sites to buy, you can see what the listed "retail price" is. And chances are, a used dress will have pictures from the wedding in the listing.

Looks like "Natalia" went for around $1,100 retail, so now I know if that's inside or outside of my budget before I even hit the salon.

And that's it! I have some more pictures of a dress I'm interested in, and I am prepared for the price of it.
Of course, some dresses are not as easy to track down as others.  When they are pictures of real brides in a dress, it is harder to find the name or style number.  But I have found that if it is a popular pin, some bride out there has already asked about it, and you can find the answer!

I also like to use preownedweddingdresses.com to get an idea of the overall price of a designer's line.  Now I know whether or not to include that brand in my dress search, along with salons that carry that brand.  

Remember to consider the separate lines by one designer.  A "couture" line might be more expensive than the regular "bridal" line.  And a line like Wtoo is the cheaper option by Watters.

I hope this helped you! I've obviously been using this in my wedding dress search, but I also have used it successfully in other internet fashion emergencies!

All personal screenshots, except the dress from wtoo.com.