Hope this helps you find the correct bra
 

I just went bra shopping! Miserable experience. :dizzy: Stores do not carry small bands and large cups. :no:

I came home feeling very odd indeed and started researching how to measure myself just in case it was my own darn fault and I found all these sites telling me to add five inches to my band measurement???? :?: I was convinced this was wrong because the size 36 I am wearing right now is way too big and slippy and the 34's I tried on fit to the smallest hook size and were still a little slippy. I'm pretty sure I'm a 32 but my measurements would suggest I'm a 38, according to what I was finding online.

Then I found this site: (I sure hope it saves someone else from frustration! I know I'm not the only one trying to figure out what size she is these days.)
http://www.belladonnaeyes.co.uk/bra_fitting_part_01.htm

Holy Toledo, I think I'm a 32 G. :o Now, where to shop? I'd rather actually visit the retailer. Who sells 32 G?

Online would be my guess...but I have the opposite problems. Right now I'm at about a 42 C, but 42 C is where the cup starts to get bigger, and I don't have anything to fill it. So 40 C is where I am in cup size...but the band is a little too small. I honestly have gotten SO frustrated with bras...especially lately because I have lost a lot of my fat there. :P

Me too!! :rofl: And yet I've gone UP from a DDD to a freaking G! Oh, I just hate bras!

But this site taught me that cup sizes are really just relative to band size and the stores sell bras according to what they think the average woman wears, but the average woman (97%) are wearing the wrong size bra because they're squeezing themselves into what they think the average woman is wearing. :dizzy:

Case in point...I found TWO bras in a size 32 in the entire department. I just learned online that most women think a size 32 band corresponds to a size 8 pant, when in fact it actually loosely corresponds to a size 12 pant. Ah...me!! There are a lot of women smaller than me out there...where are they finding their bras? :mad:

I've always been small up top and it is SUCH a frustrating experience trying to find bras. 36 big A or small B . . . . . I was told once this is the normal, average, whatever you want to call it . . . . not so much when you try to actually find it.
Worse yet when you find one that fits and go to some other retailer an find out their version of that size is a different fit all together.
Boo to that

It may not do you much good, since they're both UK companies, and shipping would probably be horrifically expensive, but my bra size is very similar to yours, and I get my bras from either Marks & Spencer or Bravissimo. M&S isn't bad, but Bravissimo is especially good at small band/high cup sizes, since they specifically cater to the busty. And they have *pretty* bras! (So does M&S, but you actually sort of have to look for ugly-and-purely-utilitarian at Bravissimo. That would be my sports bra.)

And those sites with their 'add 5 inches' malarkey made the bra fitter roll her eyes, when I told her about it.

34 GG here so I feel your pain. I wear a brand that I order on line, Jeunique. Their band size goes by my actual rib cage measurement, but recently I bought a LeMystere bra at local department store as the Jeunique have very prominent bra seams that were showing now that I'm wearing better fitting shirts. Anyway, the LeMystere does some of that "add on" math because the bra fitter there put me in a 38 G after I couldn't even get the 34 on.

Glad the beau likes the boobs but I'm a bit disappointed that even after losing 100 lbs I'm too top heavy to buy cute lingerie.

That is what I have read, too!! I was wearing a 36D b/f my son was born... now I find some D's are a wee small and I need to go up to a 36DD. (Now that I am losing weight, my D's are fitting better) Sometimes, if the bra runs small, I need to go up to a 38D/38DD. So, one day I measure myself and I am 37 inches. Which would ahve made sense to me to be btwn a 36 and 38. But if I add 5 to 37... that would be 42. WTF? There is NO WAY I am a 42!! If I put on a 42 it wouldn't stay put - it would slide right up!

I think bras are BS.

Thank you for sharing, this will deifnitely help :)

I went for a free bra fitting at Intimacy, do you have one in your area? Or Nordstroms? I hear they do them well, too.

It was an odd but good experience. The woman who did my fitting (who looked like my grandma) put me in a band way tighter than I would have picked out for myself, but it fit well. I think we generally pick bras that are too big on the band but too small in the cup - that's what I was doing, anyway.

I'm waiting until I get to goal weight, and then I'm going to go for another fitting.

I hate buying bras six ways to Sunday! For reals! :mad:

So I decided to check out the link that Eliana shared, hoping it would finally make the whole thing make sense.

I read this sentence and laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face:

:cookie: ???

:chicken: ???

:rofl:

I had a fitting like this and was amazed at how tight the band was!! I was also to wash the bra after a week and bring it back to be taken in. Very surprising. I was wearing a 34D and I'm really a 32 but don't fit the cup sizes in 32 for some reason.
The amazing thing was I have alway been a 36C :rofl: and that was fitted as well by a person who worked in a bra shop. Very strange all this measuring :dizzy:

Nice article!

Tried a bra extender?

I go with how the band and straps fit on me. This is a pretty good explanation that's shorter:

http://www.wikihow.com/Measure-Your-Bra-Size

Thing is... finding a SPORTS bra... that's sometimes a whole other challenge with the bounciness factor.

A.

Yeah, for sure. If I added 5" to my under-bust measurements, my boobs would fall right out through the bottom of the band. I'm a 34G and I can't buy anything here in my local town. I have to go to Nordstrom in Seattle. But it's well worth the trip. And this year I bought a swimsuit for the first time, because I finally found a place online who had tops with underwires and cup sizes (not those silly elastic "shelf bras" that my boobs fall right out of). It took a couple of weeks to get here, and when it arrived I figured out why....it came from England!

I bought it on a site called Figleaves. They have a UK site and a US site, but I think all the merchandise comes from the UK. At any rate, they also have bras in small band/large cup combinations. So maybe give them a try?

What? For real? It says that?! Did I post the right link? :rofl: Whoops! Well, what *I* read I really liked! :D

My own saga continues. I went to Maidenform last night and got...ahem...fitted. I use the word very loosely. I went in saying I thought I was a 32-34 G. I got stares and stops and hums and hahs. The very wonderful worker measured my band over the breast, not under and determined I was a 38. Ladies, I am no longer a 38. I'm just not. The 36 I was wearing was way too sloppy, which is why I was in the store to begin with. I stood my ground, however weakly, which is when the manager came out and oh the looks I got when I said I thought I was a 32-34 G. Any idea what it's like to stand in front of a group of women all staring at and sizing up your boobs while you stand there thinking, "Oh my goodness, they think I'm fat and here I am trying to delude myself that I've done something good for myself." Anyway, I convinced them to let me try the 36's and I felt like they fit nicely, though too comfortably and would still have liked to go with 34. But I went ahead a purchased a 36...which isn't going to last me long. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Then I went to Lane Bryant for my friend to try on bras. They measured her under the breasts at the actual band, so I asked why they measured differently. There was the sweetest skinny guy working at Lane Bryant! I've never met a man working at Lane Bryant before! He got in on the conversation and said some people think it's best to measure "skinny" girls over the breasts because bras only go down to a size 28 and they need to increase their band size in order to make them think they're going to fit into the "larger" size 28 because it's all the retailer has! Can you believe that?! And he said some people just think that's the proper way to measure.

He measured me, which was very funny as he asked, "When was the last time you were measured by a man?" I laughed and it made the experience a little more humorous. He measured me a 33, so a 34 band. Yep...what I thought!!

Long story short...I miss Lane Bryant! :rofl:

The lady worker at the store said they had nothing to fit me, which was nice to hear and sad all at the same time. I told her I'd lost 65 pounds and I swear she got just a little nicer at that point.

It sounds like the Maidenform ladies didn't have a clue what to do. I really have to go to the big city (Seattle) to find a 34G bra; if anyone in my town has one, I don't know who it would be. I'm guessing that the Lane Bryant guy was right; Maidenform didn't have the correct size for you so they wanted to move you up a band size (or two) so they could get a cup to fit.

And in Seattle, they don't look at me like I have two heads when I tell them my bra size. So that's a bonus to going to the big city for my bras.