Wedding steps

I have one thing checked off my wedding "to do" list--I bought a dress! Well, my mom dragged me out dress shopping, and it was surprisingly successful, so she actually bought it. : ) I say "surprisingly" successful because I already had a dress (which she was apparently horrified I was considering wearing).


My original dress is a "clean" version of the corpse bride dress I wore for Halloween a few years back. I picked up two identical dresses on sale because they were so pretty. I had no intention of buying a wedding dress that day, but when I tried it on, it looked so nice I figured I didn't have anything to lose (except $20). The comment I got most as the corpse bride was, "That's really a pretty dress." And that was ripped, torn, and covered in oil and mud! Two years later, I tried it on again and still thought it was just as lovely (yes, I realize you can't really see the dress in this photo). : )

But of course I found something even more lovely. I didn't go to wedding dress stores the first time around, (I bought some kind of cream colored dress from a random store) so I was quite nervous. I even made sure to dress up a bit, lest I be treated as though I "didn't belong" in any of the dress shops (I have hang ups about growing up in a lower economic area of the city, and have always felt as though I was uneducated and uncouth). Add to that I've never had any exposure to wedding planning, and always thought actual wedding stores would be intimidating and out of my price range (I didn't realize there were all kinds of shops with all kinds of ranges). Considering my mom thought Rob's parents would see my original dress as a "bargain shop" dress, I come across some of my hang ups naturally!

Anyway, my mom was clearly in her glory pulling out dress after dress for me to try on, and we came across a hit pretty early in. It's a rather romantic dress, which is quite flattering (obviously), and is just generally charming. My mom made the comment I must like it the most as I had it on "longer than all the others", which I didn't realize. But not wanting to spend money I didn't have to, I wanted to bring out a few other people for a final decision.

The next day I took my original dress over to Suzy's, (one of my brides maids who has no socio-economic hang ups, is quite level headed and proudly bought her wedding dress for a mere $12) so she could have a frame of reference for when she saw me in the second dress. Suzy agreed with me about the first dress being quite pretty, but after seeing me in the second one, she hated to admit it, said it went against all her principles, but she thought I should buy it. So, decision made, we wrapped it up and took it home. I ended up trying it on again back at her place for my other brides maid, Amanda, and I think she even got a bit of a tear in her eye!

Of course, I couldn't escape wedding dress shopping without at least one classic mother comment, which I understand for the most part is rather common. Amanda's came in response to her questioning her mom about why she wasn't tearing up at seeing Amanda try on wedding dresses, to which she got, "Well, 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce, you know."

Mine came while I was wearing the dress in question (which has a small champagne colored band across the top). My mom was asking the shop attendant what she thought about the dress, as compared to another, and said, "You see, this is her second wedding. So, don't you think this would be more appropriate?" Gasp! I said, "Well, maybe I should just get a scarlet letter emblazoned on the back. That ought to make it obvious."

I suppose wedding planning would not be complete without at least a little drama.

Rob suggested I wear the other wedding dress out during my bachelorette party, which I didn't plan on having, but that's such a fun idea, now I must! : D