Wedding Blog

I’ll start you off with a tempting picture of the dress…and then I’ll share our story:

I have to admit that while I love shopping, I have my share of breakdowns while I’m in the dressing room. My height and body shape create extreme difficulties in most shopping environments, except for a select few that happen to charge $220 for a see-thru tank top. So while I was really excited to go dress shopping last year, I was also really quite scared. I had been inundated with the images of bridal gowns in magazines just like everyone else, and what I saw time and time again were shapes that would NOT work on me.

I wasn’t quite sure where and when to begin, but luck happened and I found out that only steps away from my doorstep, the St. Pucchi boutique was having a sample sale. I made a quick appointment on a Friday, gathered some friends, and went in for my first shopping experience. Now here comes the lucky part–all of the dresses were runway samples…and they were designed for crazy tall people like me! And while I didn’t find a dress that I was willing to call “the one” … I did discover that I only had one shape to look for….

Drop-waisted with some shape, but not too poofy–and not a sheath.

Well that pretty much eliminated 99% of all the dresses out there, and the ones I found all seemed to be friends with the ridiculously expensive tank top. (Knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when it comes to wedding gowns and your money!) So instead of worrying about everything, I made my next gown appointment at my all-time favorite shop, Monique Lhuillier. I mean, if I’m going to shop big, I might as well check out the storefront I’ve been drooling over for the past few years!

This time, “the one” was found… complete with gaping mouths from my friends and a scream of delight from Mr. Lemon’s co-worker (who randomly happened in the store at the same time for her dress fitting). I was ecstatic about the experience until I opened the little price quote card and realized that my dream gown was over $6k before taxes! So I packed up my hopes and dreams about the dress, and I put them away for the next month and waited with bated breath for the ultimate indulgence in the bridal industry: the sample sale.

Monique Lhuillier has two sample sales a year (summer and winter), and my one hope was that my dream dress would be sitting on a lonely hanger in perfect condition with a price tag that I could afford. The sale started on a Thursday, but a horrific flu and 102 degree fever kept me in bed all day…so I delayed my visit to the store until Friday morning. Among the racks of dresses, I spotted the neckline immediately and tried not to jump for joy. Without looking at the price tag, I just took it to the dressing room, tried it on, and suddenly everyone around me started talking about how much they liked the dress (don’t you just love public dressing rooms!). I crossed my fingers when I glanced at the price tag, and when I saw that it was 70% off, all seemed to be right with the world. The card was swiped and the bag was wrapped…and I drove home still sick with a fever but so happy that I didn’t notice. And thus, my dress shopping was complete!

And so it’s been with me for ten months, and I’m still in love with it today. In fact, I had a moment of panic the other day that it wasn’t perfect, but all I had to do was visit another dressing room at a normal brand store to remember how lucky I was that I finally found something that really, truly fits. Panic gone…

Here are some of the photos I collected of the dress… all of them “not” featuring me (we can’t give Mr. Lemon any ideas!):