Dresses and dresses and dresses

This past Saturday was a lovely fall Maine day full of moms, sisters, and dresses. My lovely mother and sister, as well as my future-mother-in-law and future-sister-in-law, all joined me in first selecting bridesmaid dress options and then choosing a wedding dress.

We started at Andrea's Bridal in Portland to look at Alfred Angelo dresses, where a very nice lady helped technically matron but it makes her sound old Maid of Honor Moxie (my sister) and Bridesmaid Comic-con (Vader's sister) humor me by trying on dresses of all sorts and colors to figure out what they prefer. Since my sister hasn't put on a dress since her wedding and my future sister-in-law has never gone shopping with me, I half-expected revolt mid-appointment. Things went pretty smoothly, though, and both found a style they like. So far the bridesmaids vote is all for one dress, so it's still up in the air on whether there are mixed dress styles or not, aside from MOH Moxie who gets to be special. Since she is 100% responsible for the cutest members of the wedding party, I guess we'll let her pick the dress she likes most...

After a long lunch with breadsticks aplenty, we moseyed over to David's Bridal in South Portland for me to try on wedding dresses. Sure, they're a chain. Sure, I probably could have gotten champagne and more personalized attention at a smaller boutique. I like the experience of fitting into the samples and not paying thousands of dollars for my dress, however, so David's it was. I'll let the pictures (and my faces in said pictures) do the talking:

1.) First dress I tried on. Not really what I wanted, but it fit! And it had pink!

2.) This dress was BORING

3.) Vader's mom thought this one looked like lingerie:

4.) I described this one to the consultant as "monotonously interesting," which she found entertaining













5.) This chick next to me kept stealing the dresses I wanted to try on. The family was dreaming up "accidents" to get the dresses back, but luckily she finally picked one. Here's the one she picked:

6.) This dress had so many layers I got stuck getting into it, and could apparently be heard chuckling at myself from outside the dressing room.

7.) This dress was SO PRETTY. According to my consultant person, I said this a lot.
















These dresses were all beautiful (and some that were not-so-beautiful didn't make the blog photo cut), but the one I chose is actually not on this list! I tried on THE dress third or fourth among these, and was comparing each to that dress as soon as I put it on. Some decisions were harder than others (#7 took minutes to overrule, while #2 was never even a consideration), but ultimately the dress I chose featured elements of all of the dresses I've posted. Conveniently, it also matched my mom's wedding veil perfectly, and I'll be wearing both next July. My dress is comfortable, pretty, easily wear-able, and at least for now a secret. If I don't keep a few surprises up my sleeve, what will our guests have to look forward to?