The one in which I choose a dress

One day. That was how much time I had to find a dress. Because I didn’t have any vacation time to use I was basically flying in late Friday evening and flying back first thing Sunday morning. I thought it would be feasible to try to squeeze 3 shops into the trip, spaced out throughout the day.

The first shop I chose was easy. I had received an email earlier in the week informing me that Calla Bridal was having a Vineyard trunk show the weekend I was going to be there. I had been obessing over Vineyard’s Maeve for a month, so I figured this was the Cosmos’s way of telling me that this may be my dress. They penciled me in at 1.

{Maeve, by Vineyard for Priscilla of Boston}

Yelp found me my second appointment, Belltown Bride. From their website: “.. no where else in Seattle or beyond will you find the most exclusive, authentic New York designer gowns at prices that are less than half of the retail price..” Um, yes please. They had a 3:30 spot available.

The last shop I found through the wonderful interwebs. I remembered reading that Erin of Apartment #34 had found her dress at The Bridal Garden in Kirkland. Her little blog is awash with lovely, lovely style porn. If she found a dress she loved there, surely I could? They could squeeze me at 9:30.

My day was planned. Bright and early Saturday morning, the BF and I set out for coffee and chocolate crossiants and then made our way over the bridge to Kirkland. The Bridal Garden was intimate* and calming. All the pretty dresses were lined up in a neat little row and they let us browse through them and pick out what I wanted to try on. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the lady who helped us**, but she was AWESOME. I cannot stress enough how awesome she was. I had two dresses selected when I heard BF say, from the other end of the room, ..“this one might do and it’s on sale and I’m sure you can get rid of the bow..”

She had me at bow.

It was the first dress I tried on. In the first shop of the day. And I knew***. It was the softest, silkiest of satins. It hugged me in the all the right places. And it had a big, delicious bow.

Of course, I tried on the other two dresses. One was a Marisa and the other the ubiquoutus Melissa Sweet Lia. The first made me realize that ruching is all wrong on me. I have a short waist and it emphasizes all the wrong things. The Lia was beautiful, but I was already in love with the other dress.

Still. I had flewn across the ocean to have a shopping day. I couldn’t fall for the first dress? Plus, I had yet to try on the Maeve, which I was pretty sure the Cosmos was telling me was MY dress. The BF and I took a walk around the block to talk it out. The dress was a sample. It was 62% off. Did I want to take my chances that no one else was going to buy it while I looked at other dresses? We made it as far as the car when I realized I didn’t.

So I bought the first dress I tried on in Seattle. Then we went out to lunch.

Because The Bridal Garden doesn’t allow you to take photos of dresses when you are trying them on, I don’t have photos to show you of me in the dresses. And though I do have one of me in MY dress, I don’t want to share it until it actually fits me. It’s currently 2 sizes too large. Here, though, is the dress on the model. It’s Daphne, by Melissa Sweet. I think it looks better on me, if not just because I have a butt and boobs and this dress sort of calls for some of those. And though you can’t see it in the photo, it has the most fantastic bubble hem.

You know, the thing that surprised me the most, in this whole process, was realizing that I did actually want a Wedding Dress. You learn the strangest things about yourself when planning a wedding.

*I’ve since heard they moved to a bigger shop and changed thier name.
**I am terrible with names. Boo.
***I did not cry. I’m not like that.

Tagged as: dress