Yes to the Dress

Today I have a fun post for you guys!  Dress shopping!

I went dress shopping on a Sunday at the beginning of October.  I wasn't expecting to find anything.  My mom and I stopped in at Prevue one day when we were shopping just to have a look around.  The girl that helped us said that it can take up to 6 months to order a dress!  Of course I freaked out since my wedding at the point was only 9 months away and I needed time for alterations.  So we decided we needed to start looking for dresses and we made an appointment to come back the following weekend. 

I was really nervous to start dress shopping for some reason.  But what ended up happening?  I found THE dress in under 2 hours of dress shopping.  To this day, it still blows my mind.   I had my mom, my aunt, my cousin, and my future mother-in-law all there with me.  It was really amazing to have all the women in my family with me as I looked for a dress.  Looking back on it, I don't know why I was nervous at all.  I feel so truly blessed about how wonderful that day actually was.

I started looking at dresses online to try and get an idea of what I wanted before my appointment.  But I didn't care for much that I saw.  However, I did fall in love with one dress...and to be perfectly honest I walked into Prevue thinking it would be "the one".

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That was the first dress I tried on and it made my mom cry.  I felt really overwhelmed after trying on this first dress.  I think my expectations were too high since I loved it so much on the internet.  And although it's a gorgeous dress, I felt like it didn't fit quite right on me:

I'm starting to think that it's smarter to just not have any idea what kind of dress you want and just go in and try different styles.  A lot of women I have talked to say that they ended up with a dress that's completely different than what they expected.  As shown in my next dress...although I was partial to ball gowns at the time, I decided to try a different style dress: A more fitted A-line style.  I pulled this dress off the sales rack.  It was dirt cheap and I was blown away by how well it fit my body:

Although I was tempted by the price tag, I wasn't crazy about the sequin uniboob.  Although when I show people all the dresses I tried on, pretty much everyone thinks this is the dress I ended up getting! But alas, this dress just didn't do it for me.  But it did make me realize I needed to let go of my ball gown dream, and go for this style of dress!

The third dress I tried on was one that the salesgirl picked for me.  It gave me an idea of another style of dress, but it was onw of my least favorite of all the dresses I tried on:

The 4th dress I tried on was so bad I took it off right away so I have no pictures of it.  I don't even remember what it looks like!  The 5th dress I tried on was also really, really pretty.  And it was seriously so close to being it!

I loved the simple elegance of it.  But it fit a little funky around my waste.  I'm sure a little alterations would easily fix the problem.  However, for some reason the first dress and the second dress was still in the back of my mind.  I just wanted a dress that I loved as much as the first one, but that fit me as well as the second one!

The salesgirl brought me in another dress to try on.  To be perfectly blunt, I hated it on the hanger.  Absolutely loathed it.  My mom and I laughed to each other saying "What was she thinking?"  I almost didn't even try it on!!  But I decided to cover all my bases and try it anyways.  We were nearing the end of our dress shopping, so what could it hurt?  As I started putting the dress on and they were lacing me up...my love grew for this dress that I originally hated!  It was the first dress I actually said that I loved and I knew I just had to have it!

So that's my story about how I found my dress in 2 hours!  I'm not going to post a picture of my dress for obvious reasons.  You all just have to wait with Matt!