All Things Wedding From Wedding Stationery to Bridal Wear

… About wedding dresses! Yup, it’s time to talk about the dress.

First and foremost, my dress is not pictured in this post. Awwwww, you’re disappointed? Understandable and I promise to show it soon but I want to get a picture of me in the dress after it’s been fitted so you’re just gonna have to sit tight and look at how my decision-process unfolded. And drool over pretty dresses. Hey, it’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it…

The dress was high on my list of priorities after I got engaged. In fact, the saleswoman at Saks, where I went to first try on some dresses, told me dead serious-like that the dress was the focal point around which the entire wedding should revolve… interesting, very interesting.

When I first started looking at dresses, mostly in the pages of the bridal mags I bought obsessively, I was honestly a bit put off by the majority of them. Not that they weren’t pretty but they were definitely not what I was looking for. I’m pretty short (5’3″ on a good day) and I knew we wanted an outdoor wedding, so a big, poufy ball gown was out of the question. I initially decided I wanted to go super-simple for my dress, no lace or beads or any type of embellishment, country-chic, if you will…

Here’s the first dress that really stopped me in my tracks while looking through magazines…

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I still love this dress, the neckline, the pockets, the thing delicate straps, everything about it…But I knew where the Amsale store was located in New York City and it happens to be in one of the poshest shopping areas around (5th Avenue, right down the block from Gucci, Prada and LV) and deep down, I knew that I couldn’t afford the dress so I never even bothered to go try it on… next!

Have I mentioned how much I lurve J.Crew? Oh, I have? Alright then, so it should be no surprise to anyone that I was also pouring over the online bridal section… there were three that I was particularly enamored with but one is no longer on the website, so I can only show you two…

This one is kind of like the poor-man’s version of the Amsale but for only $650, and it seemed worth checking out…

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I was also head-over-heels for this one. It’s hard to tell but there is very delicate beading throughout the entire dress, which I love…

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I did eventually go to the J.Crew store to try some of these on but ultimately decided that I wasn’t absolutelypassionatelyinlove with any of them, so I kept looking.

I tried on a few Jenny Packham dresses at a discount bridal store here in New York City and decided that I actually did like beading on certain dresses. Jenny Packham gowns are incredibly gorgeous and if my budget had been slightly bigger, that’s probably what I would have ended up with (they were between $3-4K at this store). Look at these two:

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After several fruitless appointments at various bridal stores in NYC, I caved when I saw that Kleinfeld was having one of their famous sample sales. I originally didn’t think I’d be able to afford a Kleinfeld dress but I made an appointment, dragged MOH Pip with me and proceeded to try on about 20 dresses. A few of the more popular ones…

This Jim Hjelm dress is ethereal, floaty and most importantly, empire-waisted, a style I was becoming more and more enamored with…

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This Magia By Pronovias gown was simple and elegant and had a silhouette I liked, yet I felt like that certain je ne sais quoi was missing…

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I also liked this Pronovias…

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I didn’t actually try on this Oscar de le Renta gown but I tried on a few that were similar and (shocker!) decided I liked flower embellishments… plus, how freakin’ gorgeous is this dress?

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I would say the vast majority of my inspiration dresses or dresses I tried on that were contenders were very simple, with minimal beading, lace or embellishments. And of course, the dress I ended up choosing has all three, which is a little too ironic, as Alanis might say…

My dress is not among these so I will leave you now, hanging in suspense, wondering which one I chose… I promise to reveal it soon and tell the saga of how it ended up hanging in my closet.

Did your wedding dress decision evolve over time or did you know right away what you were looking for?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

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There are a lot of wedding superstitions out there. Many of them are fascinating and would be fun to incorporate into a wedding, but I recently realized I’m in the minority about one important superstition: Mr. Snow seeing my dress (if I ever get around to finding a dress).

I love love love all the ladies who save their dresses for a big reveal on their wedding day. I think that touch is so sweet and beautiful, and creates such lovely pictures and stories to kick off the wedding festivities, but for us, it is a little impractical. Mr. Snow, myself, and all our wedding DIY goodies will be packed in a VW Golf for 12 hours to get to the wedding. We’ll be in crunch time, and it is incredibly likely he’d see it unless I keep it in the moldy basement storage unit then smoosh it in the trunk or ship it home, which don’t seem to be practical solutions for me.

I’ve read so many stories of the dress being accidentally left in the open the day before the wedding after months of careful hiding (someone’s mom wants to show it grandma, the steamer comes early, the door isn’t locked, the bride forgets it is there and sends future spouse to get something), and I grieve for those brides who had the moment of reveal taken out of their hands because of the many different people that come in to help at the end of wedding preparations. I’m too much of a weenie to go there.

And, to be totally honest, I just can’t set myself up to worry about keeping it out of his sight when I’ve got napkin rings and drinking straws to occupy my type-A self.

In deciding that my dress will be on full “check it out any time you want” display, I’m following in one of my bridesmaids, J’s (I gotta work out some cuter WB pseudonyms for these ladies!) footsteps, who also made dress-hiding a low priority. She was a gorgeous, gracious bride who planned her wedding under an interesting, sometimes stressful set of circumstances. The day of the wedding, we were all waiting to walk down the aisle for her ceremony when her now-husband walked out to get his boutonniere. The sweet church wedding coordinators had an almost freak-out and started apologizing and asking J if she wanted to go back to the bridal suite. Her husband told J she looked beautiful, then said, “If we believed in superstitions, we’d have been done for a long time ago,” and twirled his soon-to-be wife. It was one of the most tender, sweetest moments I’ve seen at a wedding.

So, there will be no dress-hiding for me, even though I think it is a sweet, exciting detail to incorporate in wedding planning. I think our venue burning down was superstitious enough for us to avoid any other potential bad-luck moments.

Has your SO seen your dress? Was it a big moment in itself, even if you didn’t choose to do a big “reveal” on your wedding day?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

Once I had my dress, the next thing I wanted to finalize were the girls’ dresses. I had been on the hunt for gorgeous but affordable bridesmaid looks for a while. Here are some inspiration pictures I started with:

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(all from the knot)

In the beginning, I went to great cost-saving lengths. I stalked Nordstrom for sales regularly. I even had a weak moment one night and purchased 9 dresses myself (they were ridiculously cheap – $30 from over $200!!), thinking that they might work (they did not). My friends decided to step in at this point (thanks girls!). They made it clear how much they appreciated my attempts to keep things cheap, but reminded me that hey, they wanted to look good too!! So, from then on I focused on dresses that were less than $150 (I tried at least!) and cute.

The first decision I had to make was the color of the dresses: purple or black? It was easy – if I found dresses available in “our” purple, we’d go with those. If not, we’d go with black. I still think that black bridesmaids’ dresses are incredibly classy and gorgeous, but in the end I decided on purple because Alfred Angelo’s color “grape” matches perfectly!

Next decision? The dress length. Most of the girls agreed that cocktail or tea length was the way to go over floor length, which was fine with me. And finally, the dress style. Having been a bridesmaid myself, I know that you can never please everyone with one dress. Plus, I wasn’t really very passionate about one style of dress anyway – I picked the color and material (satin), and that was good enough for me.

After one short visit to the Alfred in Pittsburgh, the dresses were picked:

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The girls could pick from any of the above dresses, or any other satin non-floor-length dress that they liked in the store. So far, it has worked out wonderfully, and I think most everyone is satisfied with their choice. I think the color is so gorgeous (I’m biased though) . Here is Cheeseburger SisterMOH showing off her dress – you be the judge:

*P.S. – you would have thought I was breaking some kind of bridal law at Alfred Angelo. They were very nice the entire time, but they just kept saying things like, “Are you SURE you don’t mind if they’re different!?”, “What if they all pick the same dress except one girl!!?”, “What about the tea length; it’s FOUR INCHES LONGER than the cocktail length!?” I just had to really reassure them that my bridesmaids are so freaking gorgeous that no one is going to be paying attention to the length of their dresses.

Did you get a lot of flak for choosing varying bridesmaids’ dresses?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

The third leg of the dress buying journey took place in Baltimore. Cheeseburger Mom, Mom Burger, Cheeseburger SisterMOH and Sister Burger were all in town, and I was so excited (nervous). I had a lot of the same feelings I had the first time we went out since more people would be there, we were in a new city, etc., but I was so glad that they were there that I kind of forgot those feelings as we set out for the day! I had made appointments at two local bridal shops as well as the David’s Bridal in Baltimore to show everyone my more recent dress successes!

Our first stop was Bridals by Elena. We started by discussing the things that I liked and disliked, as well as the budget. Our consultant also asked me how many dresses I had tried on so far in my experiences. When I said that I thought it was around 50 or so, she was shocked. Apparently this is a pretty large number, and she had in her mind that I was going to be pretty hard to please (who, me?).

She pulled a few dresses that she thought I would like, and she was right, I did like all of them! Unfortunately, their dresses did not have tags, and they did not allow photographs, so I don’t really know much about the first few dresses I tried on.

The one dress I do remember from that store was this gorgeous number by, you guessed it, Essence of Australia!

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There was just something about this dress. It fit me wonderfully. The sweetheart was just. right. It hugged in all the right places, it had a cute little train, and gorgeous, crystal buttons down the back. But mostly I think it was the way the dress fit – I felt so pretty, and everyone loved it. I did eventually try on some other dresses after this one, but at the end of the fitting I had to put in on one more time. It felt so good.

Was this that feeling I was supposed to get?

Was this, THE ONE?

(clearly not me, but with no pics allowed this pretty bride to be will certainly do)

My consultant went to get the measuring tape to seal the deal. On her way back, she mentioned the price of the dress. It was $300 dollars above the budget I had quoted her at the beginning of the appointment. That, plus the additional $400 in alterations that I was quoted (for a corset and installation directly into the dress) made me hesitate. I decided that I needed to sleep on it, but I was almost positive that I had found my dress.

We decided to cancel the other appointments, since we were pretty sure that we had found the one. At one point I said “I feel so badly that you came all this way and we only went to one shop,” and Sister Burger said “Wasn’t that the point? To find your dress!” And it was. She was so right!

I stalked my new-found love online and found the pictures you see above. But as I looked through the pictures, I felt less and less love for her. I was missing the pleats, satin, symmetry and pure simplicity that I had seen in previous dresses. Not to mention that she was over budget. Now what?

I called Cheeseburger Mom and told her I wasn’t sold on the Essence dress. She was disappointed for me, but she obviously supported my decision. She also mentioned that she had just seen an add for a sample sale at a couture bridal boutique near the pediatrician we went to growing up. I remember being a little girl imagining trying on dresses there one day. While I figured that even their samples would be out of budget, I thought ‘hey, it can’t hurt.’ So, we made an appointment…

Can you handle one more post?

The end is near, people!

Did you find “the one” but then change your mind after sleeping on it? What made you change your mind?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.