Weddingbee boards

I suppose it depends on how easy it is for you to travel back and forth.  You will need a minimum of two fittings - and maybe more if you need significant alterations.  You should probably plan on at least three.  My dress was fairly simple in design, but it still took me four total trips to the bridal salon - one to take measurements and order the dress, one for initially fitting when the dress arrived, one more when I changed my mind about what kind of bra I was going to wear with the dress, and one final (two weeks before the wedding, just to make sure that everything had been done correctly).  With everything else that was going on, I was really glad that the store was about 15 minutes from my house.

Of course, I assume that you're going to have to make a couple of trips to NC anyway to arrange various other wedding things?  If so, maybe you can juggle things such that you do your fittings when you are down there to take care of other arrangements.

If you buy your dress and have it fitted locally, you will just need to get it to NC.  Probably your bridal salon can pack and ship it, and then it will just need steamed or pressed.  The idea situation would be to find a salon that has locations in both areas, in which case they could ship it to their NC store, and should take care of pressing it for you.

My FI bought his suit at Nordstrom (about 2-1/2 hours from where we live) and by the time we made four trips total to pick it out, have it fitted, and pick it up (they had to ship in a suit in the color he wanted, which added a trip) we 20 hours of driving - and probably $250 worth of gas - added to the 5 hours we probably spent in the store.  It's a gorgeous suit, but honestly for the extra investment in time and money we could have just had one custom made locally.