Feeling Bridal

One of the most important things about a wedding is the dress!  A lot of brides will try on hundreds of dresses before they find the perfect one.  My experience was much easier.  Like I mentioned before I had just about every wedding magazine published as soon as I got engaged - so I had tons of pages flagged with dress styles I liked. Since my wedding was going to be outside I thought I wanted something very simple, nothing too big, nothing too stuffy, no sparkles (even though I have a weak spot in my heart for anything that sparkles, I just can't help it) - I knew I loved lace, but all lace dresses seemed a bit too formal for my lakeside wedding.  These are all things I thought I wanted.... whether or not thats what I got- you will have to wait and see :) A lot of times dresses will be featured in multiple magazines - and with this one dress I had ripped the page out twice and didn't realize it until I was trying to organize all of the tears of wedding dresses that I had to make a collage in my ever-so-organized wedding binder.  At the time I had a co-worker who is also getting married and we had very similar taste - we would constantly be sending each other links to dresses and other wedding eye-candy pictures from our favorite website- stylemepretty.com.  I came into work one day and said to her "I think I found my dress"  its a little different that what I thought I would want but I have never had an attraction to a picture of a dress like this before.  Turns out, she had been looking through wedding magazines and said that she thought she found a dress too - she said, show me the one you like and then I show you the one I found.  I pulled up a picture on the Priscilla of Boston website and she goes "shut up, that's the same dress I was going to show you!"   We started joking that since her wedding was a few months after mine and she was about 3 inches taller than me that I would buy the dress, wear 3 inch heals and then she could have it altered to fit her and she would wear flats since she wanted to get married on the beach. 

I went onto research where I could try this dress on... turns out its not sold anywhere in or around Pittsburgh, no where in Cleavland (I thought maybe we could take a road trip) or in Baltimore (I thought I could go on a weekend I was visiting Jon - without him of course). Great, I felt like I was literally not going to be satisfied with anything until I at least got to try this dress on....if I didn't like it, then fine, but I at least had to try it on. 

About a month after I found this picture in a magazine I had a trip scheduled to NYC for one of my best friend's (and bridesmaid) bachelorette parties.  I was sort of hesitant to schedule an appointment while we were there because the weekend was about her, not me, and to add to the mix she didn't know where we were going so I couldn't even ask if she would mind if I took an hour or so to go try on this dress.  I decided that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try this dress on and asked the bachelorette if she would mind if I made an appointment in "the place that we were going" for her bachelorette party.  She of course said not only did she not mind, but that she wanted to come with me!  I was so excited, since my mom wasn't able to be with me I took 2 bridesmaids - 1 who was the bride-to-be we were celebrating and another who lives in NYC.  Now, if you have ever seen Say Yes to the Dress, you know that bringing an entourage with you to try on wedding dresses is sometimes not a good idea - for me it was great.  I only had 2 people with me, 1 who was in charge of documenting the experience and 1 who had bought her wedding gown from the same designer had some helpful hints for me.  Before I left for New York I asked my mom if she would mind if she wasn't there - and she graciously said that "if I felt like a bride then we would make it work" and that her feelings wouldn't be hurt if she wasn't there.

We started the appointment with the dress that I had come to try on...they put it on me and I felt weird, it was a feeling I had never felt before - the bridal consultant asked me "how do you feel?" I was a bit speechless, I didn't really know if "good" was the right word to describe how I was feeling - I just said "I think I like it".  So after that, the consultant left the room to get me a matching vail so I could "complete the look."  I was planning on telling her not to bother because I didn't want to wear a vail, but if she left the room it was a good opportunity for us to sneak some pictures. (At Priscilla of Boston you aren't aloud to take pics unless you make a purchase).  So, while she was out of the room one of my bridesmaids snapped a few pics on her camera so that my mom could see and then the consultant came back in with a vail.  She put the vail on me and I completely changed my mind about wearing a vail on my wedding day....it really did "complete the look".  The consultant had me walk around the salon to see how the dress would feel while I was walking and so that I could picture myself walking down the aisle.  This was all so fun, but I wasn't totally set on this dress.  I went on to try on about 8 or 9 more dresses and with each one I could find something I didn't like about it, it was almost like as soon as I put it on I wanted to take it off - but not with the first one, the first one I wanted to just hang out in.  So after about 10 dresses we put the first one back on and I decided "this is it".  I think I said to the consultant "So, I am going to buy this dress, so can my friend start taking pictures so we can show my mom?"  I think I surprised the consultant a bit that I made my decisions so quickly but my mom was right, I felt "Bridal".  I don't really know how to describe how feeling "bridal" feels but I know in my dress I did :) 

Here are a few pics of our wedding gown shopping experience.... none of "the" dress....you'll have to wait until the wedding for those :)