Is it all about the dress?

Well the big day finally arrives...dress shopping!!! I don't know why I just put not one but three exclamation points on there since I was not excited about it. Well, maybe a little bit, but I was also dreading it too. Apparently I am missing some sort of bride gene when it comes to the dress part. (If any of you are Sex and the City fans, think of Miranda's when she was pregnant, that would be me about the dress.)

I did some research and scoured the internet for examples of things that I thought I liked. I also combed thru all of my bridal magazines and tore out pictures of dresses that I liked in the photos. My favorite resource is a thread on this message board on brides.com that has women posting photos of themselves in their dresses vs. photos of the models. It helped big time to see real people in their dresses. When you look at some of these ads are so incredibly over the top that I think "Who wears that?"

So anyway, my Mom came into town Saturday and she and my Matron of Honor, Kelly, hunted for "the dress" at a local bridal shop. It was quite an experience. Over Saturday and Sunday, I think I probably tried on 30 dresses! That's a lot of dressing and undressing! (especially in front of strangers! lol) I had Mom, Kelly and the salespeople going back and forth, back and forth. I don't like to be that demanding (no comments!) but hey, it is an appropriate time to be right? I have narrowed it down to two for now. But that could change in the future.

The first dress is very classic and elegant and made me feel like a movie star! =) But I still feel like it would go with the more laid back theme of the beach wedding because it doesn't have any bead work or lace on it. And it is fairly light compared to many of the other dresses I tried on. How people walk around in some of these dresses with 20 pounds of bead work just boggles my mind! I do like it a lot and had even torn out a picture of it from my bride magazines. Both Mom and Kelly said several times that it just "seemed like" me and that is was their favorite. We all thought that the simpleness (is that a better word than plain?) of the dress allowed a veil (which I wasn't planning on but it did look nice with it) and more room to play with hair and jewelry.

The second dress is almost a dressier version of the first one. It has a lot more going on because it has bead work on it. Not sure how I feel about it. It isn't a ridiculous amount of beading but it still might be too much. It is a fancier dress than what I was thinking I wanted. But I do keep going back to the "how many times in your life do you get to wear something like this?" thought. This dress made me feel like a "pretty, pretty princess" more than the one above. I actually thought I looked like Cinderella in it! However, I wasn't really trying to go for the Cinderella look either. Well, maybe Beach Cinderella, whatever that means.

So that is the latest on the dress search. I will keep looking although I am leaning towards one currently. It's a big decision so I don't want to take it lightly! =) I just hope to make Bill and I feel like the couple in this picture. That is the goal. My dress doesn't have to look exactly like hers but that gives you a general idea of the feel I am going for during this whole shebang!


NOTE: There are links all over this blog! For those of you who don't know, if a word is underlined and a different color, you can click on it and it will take you to what I am referring to in my writing. There are lots of links to different dress and the two dresses that I am considering are on here but I'm not telling which ones... Have fun guessing!