Monday, March 21, 2011

About the Dress(es)

Dresses, dresses. Clearly the most important decision a bride can make (besides her groom!) is her dress. This is a pretty important decision, since you (hopefully) only get one shot to get it right.

The most beautiful bride of them all, Grace Kelly.

I know many women dream of their wedding dress for years and years--I am not one of those women. But as soon as I got engaged I knew I had to get it into gear and figure out what I want. For months I have been tearing out pages from myriad bridal magazines and saving picture after picture from wedding sites. It became pretty clear that I like the following:

  • fit and flare (aka trumpet aka mermaid) silhouettes:
"Cincinnati" by Blue by Enzoani
  • structured, asymmetric gowns:
"Berta" by Carolina Herrera
  • vintage inspired gowns:
"Morgan" by Priscilla of Boston, Vineyard Collection (maybe the most perfect gown ever?)

Now, as nice as it would be to spend $4000 on a Priscilla of Boston gown, I just don't have that kind of scratch. I instead focused my search on the designers in the $1000-$1500 range, such as Allure, Justin Alexander, and Blue by Enzoani. There is a single store that I could find in Chicago that carries all of these designers, so it was a no brainer where I would head once the time came. As we just passed the 200 day mark, the time was this weekend. 

On Saturday, my two loyal Chicago bridesmaids accompanied me an hour outside the city to Tinley Park, IL, where the three of us embarked upon this adventure together. Since none of us had ever been on a wedding gown shopping trip before, we weren't entirely sure what to expect. What did we find? Lots and lots and lots of white, poofy dresses (and bored family members). 

Where to start?

With a consultant assigned to help me and the mantra "nothing in fashion, nothing out of style," I began pulling and nixing gowns to try on. The consultant was actually really good a pulling dresses that fit my sensibility, and I really did like almost all of the gowns I tried on. 

But one gown stood out. 

In fact, it was one of the very first gowns that caught my eye in the very first bridal gowns that I bought. I showed it to my 'maids on the way to the store and said I was hoping to try it on. When we walked into the store, guess what was hanging up behind the front desk? Yep, that dress. 


I tried it on, I loved it, my 'maids loved it, the consultant loved it, even the bored woman waiting for her niece loved it.  ("It's the best one," she said, slightly surly.) And the price? It fit my budget to the penny. So, I bought it. I did. I still can't believe it, and have kind of been freaking out since then. As soon as I bought it, doubt started creeping in. Can I really pull off a tea-length gown? I mean, I like how they look, but I always pictured myself in a dress with a train. I also worry that it's not "bridey" enough, and that I will miss my one-in-a-lifetime chance to wear a completely insanely stunning wedding dress.

The biggest sliver of doubt has been caused by a rogue contender:


The gown is originally $4000 but is being resold for a fraction of the price. It needs a cleaning and will most likely need a teeny bit of alteration, which placed it solidly outside of my budget. But THEN, when I told my mom about my predicament, she and my dad offered to help out so I could get the 2nd dress! Now what am I supposed to do?!

Honestly, every time I think about either gown I feel a little sick to my stomach. Who knows whether I will ever feel that I made the right decision, or if it's even possible to really feel that way. Talking to a recently married friend about the situation did help me feel a little better. Here's her advice:
I'm going to tell you two things: DON'T doubt your dress! If that means you return this for the other, OK. But the other thing I'm going to tell you is, at the end of the day, it's just a dress. I loved my dress, but part of me felt like I rushed into it just because I hated the whole dress buying process and was so super stressed about it. In reality I don't think I needed to spend as much as I did--but every time we see a bridal store, I think about how much I want another, different dress! You're not going to stop wanting a wedding dress just because you get married. You're always going to see pretty dresses and think, why didn't I find that? (Better to do that with dresses than grooms.) And you will look like a bride, because you'll BE the bride!
Sage advice, indeed. And now, dear readers, I ask for your advice. What the heck do you think I should do?




Tuesday, March 8, 2011

For the Newly Engaged...

Over the weekend, my old roommate and I were watching "Singin' in the Rain" for the 1000th time when I got a text from one of my bridesmaids:


This of course was followed by several emails and a lengthy skype conversation the following day, where I learned such details as her wedding date (THIS Labor Day!), where they are getting married (his hometown), her wedding color (ALSO purple), and her fiancĂ©'s name (Mike. Whoops). 

Being in a position to dole out any sort of advice at all about wedding planning is a pretty novel idea to me, but there I was, talking with a good friend with an even tighter schedule than I have, advising her on the books, magazines, and sites that have garnered the most useful information for me. At the top of the list? "The Knot Book of Wedding Lists," brought to you by the wedding gurus behind The Knot franchise. 
Your average 7-year-old girl reading up on recent wedding trends.

When I first knew I was getting engaged, I browsed through the wedding section at countless bookstores and bought nothing. There are several reasons for this. First, I am not the sort of girl who has dreamed about her wedding since she was five, and so any book that either states that directly or implies it on the first page is immediately out. (Believe me, this gets rid of about 80% of them.) Second, a lot of them had information or advice that I have no use for, such as hiring the perfect wedding planner (no), planning a destination wedding (does it count if both of our families are traveling here?), or other froofy crap I just do not care about. What mainly interested me were the DIY books, which are somewhat helpful but never seemed to have enough ideas in them that I would use to warrant a purchase. Why should I buy a book for just 1 or 2 crafts when I can look up ALL the crafts I want for free online? So in the end, the one and only book I did buy is one that is completely utilitarian. No froofy crap, no lovey dovey stuff, no hearts, doves, nothing. Just lists of stuff that wedding neophytes such as myself would never have thought of. And I love it

Don't worry, I left the bookstore with plenty of material: piles of bridal magazines. I don't know why, but I've always had an addiction to magazines. Something about flipping through page after glossy, colorful page sparks my imagination. At the suggestion of an engaged Borders employee who was commiserating with me on the sorry state of bridal books, I purchased an accordion folder and have been cutting out every page or image that speaks to me. By now my inspiration folder is looking pretty impressive, and it's also really interesting to me to see how clearly I favor a certain style or look. For example, I didn't have a clear idea for a hairstyle, but checking the "hair" category of my ideas folder proved me wrong. Almost every single image I pulled for that section is the same style. Who knows how long it would have taken me to figure that out otherwise! D: (And, for the record, the magazines I've found most helpful so far are Chicago Brides and Martha Stewart Weddings.) 

For some reason this hairstyle keeps showing up in my "inspiration folder"...

So, how's about those helpful links? We all know about the big ones (The Knot, Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings), and these all have TONS of useful information and ideas. But there is a website I've been using quite a bit recently called Wedding Bee. It's basically the cutest wedding site ever, and features several brides blogging about their upcoming nuptials. There are also pretty extensive forums for brides to share their tips and tricks. The best part is how DIY-heavy the site is, and how these women make it seem their projects seem, well, do-able. No offense to Martha Stewart, who is clearly a master of the trade, but her projects can be a little ... out of my reach. (See: DIY Wedding Cakes) But seeing a bride just like me cutting and gluing and drawing and folding and creating? Ah, now that's just the sort of inspiration I need.