As a bride it is often assumed that your main decision is to do with the dress you are going to wear for your big day. Whilst your wedding dress is of course a massive decision and a big part of your big day, bridesmaid wedding dresses are also a big part of the decision.
If you have lots of bridesmaids then you may have to even budget for the type of dress that you want because of the cost of buying multiple dresses. It really doesn't matter what type of budget you have, there are bridesmaid wedding dresses to suit everyone.
Some brides take some of the pressure off of themselves and let the bridesmaids choose their own dresses. This can be a great if you have a couple of bridesmaids and they are friends, so they can come to a decision together. However if you have bridesmaids that don't know each other they ever need to try and compromise or you are going to have bridesmaids wedding dresses on your big day that don't match.
If you are choosing the dresses then there are lots of decisions to be made.
One thing you need to be sure of, no matter what style you go for is that it doesn't clash with your choice of dress. For this reason most brides like to choose their dress first and make sure they are 100% happy with it before they go ahead and order their bridesmaid wedding dresses.
Whatever you decide, it is probably a wise choice to include your bridesmaids in the decision on the dress, after all it is going to be something they wear all day so you want to make sure it is something that are happy and comfortable with.