Wedding Blog

As it has been noted MANY times on the bee, it is next-to impossible to find a decent Mother of the Bride dress out there these days. The options seem to be:

- Boring beige (albeit with sparkles) MOB dress ordered from a bridal store. To be honest, this dress comes in a rainbow of colors, but it is still prohibitively expensive which is worse when you realize it will only get one wearing.

 - Love Boat hooker-wear

- The same dress every MOB wears because they can’t find anything else that isn’t the first two options above

Many, many people have suggested looking at Nordstrom’s. In fact, I think the first time I heard this suggestion was on the bee back in early February when I first happened upon the site. I went on the Nordstrom’s site and indeed, there were many, many dresses to choose from, which I thought was great.

Ok. Have you BEEN to a Nordstrom’s to look for a MOB dress? I can tell you now, there’s nothing. My shower was in mid-May in Philadelphia and the plan was to go to the Nordstrom’s at the King of Prussia mall after the shower. The thought was that since it is a flagship store, we would have even more of a selection to choose from. No. such. luck.

When we got inside, we asked someone where the special occasion dresses were…we giddily explained we were looking for a MOB dress. The woman pointed to an area of the store not far from where we entered. From where we were standing we could only see an orange be-spangled slinky dress with a slit to there and a V to the other there with a gaudy brooch to nestle between the breasts. Surely there must be something else, we thought, so we turned the corner expecting to see the wealth of options that were online. Again, no. such. luck. There was nothing. There were exact replicas of the orange dress in aqua and a few cocktail dresses, but that was it.

We found another sales associate and explained that we were looking for MOB dresses and asked if she could point us in the right direction and she said, rather defensively, that these were all they had. At this point I almost throttled the woman. Instead, I calmly explained that we were looking for something a bit less hooch. I may have gone a bit bridezilla by continuing on to point out that it was the start of wedding season and I couldn’t possibly be the only person with a mother who wasn’t a size 2 looking for a decent dress to wear for a wedding. The sales associate just started backing away from me like she was scared I might grow another head.

With no other options, we discouragedly headed out of the store. On our way out, the first sales lady we had seen asked us if we had found anything and I explained to her that the only thing that was there wasn’t very MOB appropriate. She looked at us semi-empathetically and said, ‘I know, as soon as anything comes in it goes right out the door’. Are you kidding me?? The demand is that great and Nordstrom’s can’t figure out to stock more? Grrrrr…

We looked at many other stores too; Macy’s, JC Penney, Boscov’s, Bon Ton, Catherine’s, Lord and Taylor; you name it, we have been there to look for a MOB dress. They all have the same three dresses. My mom wanted something special, not something she knew would show up as the MOB dress of 2007 in every bride’s wedding album.

Obviously, I am not the first bride with this issue; it has been documented so many times by so many brides just on this site alone. So what is the deal? The demand is clearly out there…where is the supply?

With two weeks left until the wedding, I don’t have time to leave you all hanging. We did eventually find a gorgeous outfit that my mom loves and that will coincidentally go with the whole feel of our wedding. We finally found it in a store called W.O.W. (Women of Worth) here in the Boston area. The outfit is silk and the top is hand dyed. It was expensive, but it is made of pieces that my mom can, and will, wear again. I am posting it here for two reasons. One, because my mom looks beautiful, comfortable and happy. Secondly, because I think it is important to see that there are other options out there if you search hard enough.

Happy hunting. And if anyone wants to open up a MOB shop with me, let me know.

The Mother-of-the-Bride Dress/Outfit

The Rehearsal Dinner outfit