Weddingbee boards

I'm about your same size (actually a little bigger up top), and I'm totally doing a strapless mermaid dress.  Strapless can be really flattering on a larger chest, especially because so many v neck or halter dresses will show far too much cleavage on a bigger chest.  The key is to find a dress that is more structured, rather than a flowy beachy type dress. I love your dress, ejs!  Mine is sort of like that, but it's fitted to a little further down...  I would be careful ordering a dress from china in terms of support, a cheaper dress here that you can actually examine in person and try on is more likely to work for you than one where the seamstress might be cutting corners to copy a more expensive design.  Internal support is important but since it's visible it would be one of the first things a knock off would cut out. 

In my own experience, you shouldn't hold too tightly to an idea you have going into dress shopping. After trying on dozens of dresses and getting incredibly frustrated because the dresses I liked in pictures didn't work for my body, I found that letting go of any preconceived ideas and keeping a totally open mind let me find the dress that looked right ON me.  It was never ever something I would have picked out just by looking at a picture or on the hanger, but when I put it on I realized it flattered my body, and that was what was most important.  It wasn't a beautiful dress that I was wearing, it was a dress that made ME look beautiful.  But now I'm getting way off topic, lol.

I love Panache for bras, that's where my strapless is from.  You can get them in all kinds of sizes from figleaves.com.   They might have a bra for you to use at the shop, but I would suggest taking your own.  More than likely the ones they have won't be very good, and if the sample won't zip all the way then you'll want to make sure you're at least wearing a good bra.

I'm in between sizes, if that makes any sense. I wear a 32DDD but am actually 2 different cup sizes so I have to go for the larger of the two. For that reason, a strapless bra would not work for me at all unless it was entirely custom made. It would likely have to have alot of boning for support and if that is anything like underwire which spends more time poking places it shouldn't than actually being supportive, then that wouldn't work either. A strapless neckline looks great with my neck and shoulders but being disproportionate otherwise scares me away from that idea.

I definitely agree though that you have to try on dresses to see what looks best on you and you can't go strictly by pictures alone since most are airbrushed models that are not proportionate to real life women at all, and no two people are built the same way to begin with. The same goes for bras since you have to try those on as well to see what works best for you.