There are not many customers scarier than a bride-to-be on the prowl for her wedding dress. So I was intrigued to learn that some wedding dress shops are now charging fees ranging from £25 to £50 just to try on gowns. The move is designed to get rid of time-wasters, including some girls who are not even getting married (scary, huh?).

The move comes after the use of cameras was banned in many boutiques following increasing numbers of women who try on their dream dress, photograph it and then get it copied for a fraction of the price.

"Quite a few shops have started to charge now, and I can see why retailers are doing it," says Deborah Joseph, editor of Brides magazine. "Charging for an appointment forces a bride to think about whether or not she is serious about buying a dress from that particular designer. The first fitting can take an hour, and a woman will probably try on six different styles of dress."

"We offer a very specialist service, so we do charge a consultation fee," admits Sally Wright, of bridal couturier Phillipa Lepley. "All of our assistants are trained professionals with years of experience, so they know how to help brides pick a dress that will hide problem areas and enhance their best features. Even people who don't end up buying a dress from us will often recommend the service to their friends," Ms Wright says.

You may not be blatantly parted from crisp notes amid the taffeta though - look out for 'appointment fees', 'consultation fees' and 'deposits'. Some retailers may deduct the fee from the cost of the dress if you decide to buy it. Alternatively, petite brides can get as much as 70% at designer sample sales. The high street is offering more choice than ever - head to Monsoon, Coast and Debenhams or one of Oxfam's 10 bridal shops (where most of the gowns are donated from designers and bridal shops and are sold at around 30% of their original price) for lovely off-the-peg gowns.

Have your say.. Are you a bride-to-be who would refuse to pay a try-on fee? Perhaps you run a bridalwear shop and are fed up with time-wasters? Are high street dresses the way forward? Leave your comments below....

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Forget the credit crunch, Equitable Life and soaring petrol costs. The debate buxom women everywhere are most concerned about is the 'storm in a DD cup' at Marks & Spencer.

The high street favourite sells around 20million bras a year in the UK, that's 45 every minute. But it has recently padded its costs with a £2 surcharge on bras  above DD cup, saying the cost of the extra work and material justifies the higher price.

Now a Facebook group - Bras4Justice - has been set up to lobby M&S over its policy. Campaigners say that the pricing is discriminating against the more well-endowed and point out that the other items of clothing, such as T-shirts and trousers, are the same price regardless of size. "If you don't charge a size 20 woman more for a pair of trousers, then why should you pay more for an E cup bra?," says one curvaceous contributor.

I can see that more work goes into making a bra than a T-shirt, or even trousers. But what would the alternative be? To spread the extra costs of the big bras across all bras?

Michelle Mone who owns the Ultimo lingerie range also charges more (£3) for bigger sizes and has a more detailed explanation for the costs: "From a technical aspect, when you go up from a DD cup to a G cup, it takes three times longer to develop than an A-D cup," she told the Evening Standard. "It costs more for the wires and straps and then there's the shipping. It costs an extra 25p to ship bras above DD. If God has given you that gift, that is the price you have to pay," she says.

Is this discrimination or is it perfectly acceptable for retailers to pass on the extra cost? Leave your comments below....

Photo: Marks & Spencer

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Since my last blog highlighting the US trend of companies selling us smaller products for the same price - known as short-sizing - the claims of UK shrinkage have been coming in thick and fast from msn users. You see, size does matter. So here's your supermarket sweep of shrinking items.... Thanks for all your feedback. Let's keep the list - and awareness - going.  Send me a message or leave a comment below....                                                                                                            Basics...

• "Tescos have changed the packages for their Bakery "Tiger" bread - you now get 600g instead of 800g."
• Shredded Wheat - many of you pointed out that there are 27 in a pack instead of 30. All for the same price.
• "Muller Vitality yogurts were 150g they have just shrunk to 125g and are still at the same price."
  "My wife used to buy Onken Lite fruit Mousses. These are now 1/3 smaller but are still the same price."
• "Organic Weetabix has recently reduced it's 'biscuit' size. Because it's sold as a multipack, there's no need to put a weight on the pack, but the nutritional information has changed and the pack is slightly smaller - but there are still 24 biscuits in a pack and that's how it's sold - very cunning!"
• "The obvious one is Pringles. They still come in the same size tubes but now hold 170g rather than 200g. There are still a few flavours with 200g in the tubes but most are now 170g."
• "Tesco sea salt that was in a 500g container was 93p is now sold in a 350g and is the same price."
• "Streamline jam was 480g for £1.19 is now 350g and is the same price."

Meat, fish, poultry, ready meals...

• "Tesco barbecue wings used to be 14 pieces--it's now 10."
• "I've bought Waitrose minced beef for years  and it always used to be 550g but now all their minced meat is 500g for the same or more price."
• "ASDA ready meals was 6 for £4 now 5 for £4."
• "Birds Eye packs of what used to be 36 fish fingers have shrunk to 30 but the price has stayed the same."
• "Tesco changed their battered Cod fillets from 6 packs to 4 packs. They've changed the prices too but the net effect is an increase in price."
• "Look out for minced meat; beef, turkey and pork. 500g used to be the standard size but this has dropped to 450g in Asda. I also think salmon fillets have become smaller in Sainsburys but you don't notice because it 2 in a pack so you look at the quantity rather than the overall weight."

Alcohol, soft drinks, water....

• "Beer and lager from supermarkets is a culprit. I normally buy cases for cost effectiveness but the case size had already dropped a while ago from 24 to 20 but now it has reduced even further to 18 or 15."
• "The beer companies have been at it for ages with bottles. First it was a 24 pack of 330ml then it went to a 20 pack of 300ml, now its packs of 270ml and the price stays the same."
• "Strongbow have recently dropped from 18 to 15 cans in a case."
• "Tesco own brand cordial that used to be a 1 litre bottle had shrunk down to a 750 ml bottle but gone up in price by 20p."

Non-food...

• "There is more water in own brand items such as bath foam and shampoo to keep size and price the same."
• "Timotei has just changed the packaging of their product so that the cap is at the bottom - it looks smaller and costs 40p more."
• "Toilet rolls are now about three times the diameter and much thinner. The sheets have got smaller and by puffing them up with hot air in manufacture they are not as thick, and there are not so many on the roll."
• "Tesco value kitchen roll that I used to get 4 for 99p had shrunk down to just 2 rolls claiming that they are jumbo rolls."
• "A cheeky one from Tesco's as the hayfever season got under way..Tescos own brand of hayfever pills..I used to buy a box that lasted a month - one pill per day. One pill per day. The box had 2 blister packs each with 14 pills. NOW.. Same box but only HALF of the spaces are filled with pills.What a waste of packaging, what a bad consumer deal."
• "Rennie's is another brand that has shrunk package size. You used to get 96 in a box, now only 72 for the same price. And all this stress is giving me indigestion!"
• "Fairy liquid has an offer - buy 2 for £2. If you check the content its gone from 500ml to 400 ml. So we save 50p but lose 200ml."

Biscuits, cakes, sweets, chocolate...

• "I am shocked at how small Tracker bars have become, a little like the Wagon Wheel, they seemed so much larger when I was younger!"
• "I went to pick up a multi pack of Smarties and it was always a pack of 4 but this time it was a pack of 3. The price was the same though."
• Many of you report that Cadburys dairy milk large bars have shrunk from 250g to 230g. "This was cleverly disguised by a simultaneous change in packaging."
• There have also been lots of comments about Mars bars - size and quality - but nothing firm on shrinkage for the same or higher cost.

Photo: www.mothercare.com

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If a bill drops onto your doormat then it's pretty obvious what you are paying for and how much it costs. But with bank charges it's nowhere near as clear. Are you paying them? Any idea how much they cost each month?

Most of us don't according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) which this week said the current account market 'is not working well' for customers. Many do not know how much they pay in bank charges and the complexity and lack of transparency of current accounts made it "extremely difficult" for people to compare their account with others.

For something that so quietly creeps into the your list of debits, these charges certainly pack a punch. The OFT says they generated a staggering £8.3 billion for banks in 2006 alone - that's more than the money made from savings and credit cards combined. Incredible. Banks are making £152 a year from every active account, and that 12.6m accounts - 23% of those in use - had incurred at least one insufficient funds charge in 2006. 1.4 million people pay more than £500 a year in bank charges. Are you one of them? 

The OFT will now talk to the banks to improve clarity for customers. Surely they can list charges in a 'Janet and John' style crib sheet and show a break down in statements for starters?

"This confirms what we've always argued - that there is no such thing as free banking," says Phil Jones of Which? "Most people have no idea how much they pay for their current account, and the market is uncompetitive. It's a catch-22 situation - people aren't switching because there's little difference between the big banks' current accounts and, because people aren't switching, banks have little incentive to compete for customers."

The British Bankers' Association (BBA) said the report had only looked at revenue and not considered the cost of running a current account. Its chief executive, Angela Knight, insisted the market was "very competitive" and dismissed the OFT's £152 average annual charge figure as "contrived" on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Frankly, you have only got to just pick up your literature, go and look in the branch, have a look on the website and you will find that everything there is clear. Yes, you can incur charges if you do things without making arrangements first, but do you really want to pay for ATM use, pay for statements, pay for direct debits in this country? Surely people don't."

Surely Angela Knight does not expect us to believe that it costs £8.3billion a year to cover the cost of the banking blips customers make? No one expects to get an overdraft for free but it seems the difference between reasonable costs (and small profit margin) and the enormous sums being made  here is HUGE. Have your say - leave a comment below.....

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Nothing is more of a turn-off for children than a sentence that begins "When I was young.....". But even as a (relatively) young person, the contrast between my childhood experiences and the today's children increases all the time. After drying up a couple of piles of dishes and tidying my room I was rewarded each week with what to me was the princely sum of 10p. I would head off on my bike to the local shop where it was immediately invested in a copy of Whizzer and Chips and some penny sweets.

Today it was revealed that pocket money is the latest casualty of the credit crunch as parents cut back. But it is hardly surprising given the sums involved. Children receive an average of £8.01 per week in pocket money, an increase of over 600% since 1987, according to new research from Halifax's 20th Anniversary Pocket Money Survey from last year. This figure is 19p less than 2006 and it will be interesting to see what the next set of figures - due in about a week - reveal, not least because research from Axa show that about a fifth of parents have cut the amount that cash they gave to their children in the last six months.

I know it depends on the age of the child and a seven-year-old needs less than a 13-year-old. I like to think that most of them still do chores for their pocket money. By 15 I had a Saturday job to fund my Duran Duran album needs (showing my age, I know).

In the current climate I think we can expect to see parents borrowing from children to cover soaring bills. More than a million parents are thought to have already raided their children's savings accounts in January last year to tide them over after an expensive festive season, according to Yorkshire Bank. Perhaps this habit will take off and the Bank of Mum and Dad could soon be the Bank of Junior.

Have your say.... how much pocket money do you give your children and do they have to do chores? Have you ever dipped into your child's savings account? Do you still borrow from your parents? Leave a comment below.....

Photo: Child of the '80s website

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