Wedding Blog

On my continued search for a Wedding Dress, Mama Frenchie, Sister Frenchie Bridesmaid F (she has an English Bulldog), and I all went to La Soie Bridal in the Tustin Market Place.

At La Soie we meet with Stephany, a totally sweet girl. Stephany pointed us toward the A-line dresses, let us go through the racks and pull out anything to try on. I pretty much decided to try on anything the entourage showed me. One thing I noticed when going through their racks was how reasonable the dresses were priced, all around $700-$1000.

Once in the dressing room (yes, this time it was big enough to call a room, AND it had mirrors! I forgot to mention that DB does not have mirrors in their boxes) I tried on the first dress Stephany had picked out for me and really liked it. Plus, I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that I fit in their sample size - YAY! I walked out to show Sister Frenchie and BM F. Everyone kinda liked it, but like me, there were things about it they didn’t like - mainly the corset/lace-up back. I also didn’t like the weird fabric under the boobs.

As you can see, the sample fit but was still too small. The back didn’t lace up right, and my boobs are coming out - pretty, no?

After this dress, I tried on a BUNCH more (sorry, no pics of those), and then Stephany pulled out a dress I didn’t really want to try on, but agreed to anyway. Well once I put it on, I LOVED it! I made me look skinnier, it kept the girls under control, it could be altered into a sweetheart neckline, and it was soooo light (organza’s like that, you know). But, I didn’t want to stop trying dresses on, because I wasn’t completely sold, so I tried on a few more.  I tried on the first one and the organza one on again… AND took pictures!

Sister Frenchie was armed with my camera, and BM F was on the lookout.

we took the picture above, and a picture of me in the organza dress. (Of course, we found out later that picture taking was totally allowed… HAHAHA!)

Oh, LOOK! She has a face, and it’s a happy one! (So happy that it looks like I invited my chins to the party.) This dress is still too small, so the girls are still kinda pushing out, but you get the idea. So, this is the dress! We put down the deposit…  and so the search was over, right? Ummm wrong. Nothing is that easy!

The next Monday night, I went school and saw my friend who works at La Soie Bridal (we’ll call her D). I told D that I had found and purchased a dress (YAY), but I couldn’t find the dress on Maggie Sottero’s website (Booo). This made D nervous which, in turn, made me nervous… she said that that could mean that the dress had been discontinued! I brushed it off and thought, ‘No, Stephany knew what she was doing. Plus, she put the order in today, so surely she would have noticed then that the dress had been discontinued.’

The next day while I was at work, ironically emailing with some friends about my wedding dress, D called me from the salon. She checked, and sure enough, Cherelle (my dress) had been discontinued. I wish I could tell you how upset I was, because then I wouldn’t feel so silly that I bought a dress that I didn’t really want. At first, yeah, I was bummed, but I was never upset. D felt horrible, and I just told her not to worry about it and thanked her for checking. I even tried to find the dress somewhere else, and I did, in Maryland, about 1.5 hours from my aunt and uncle. But I didn’t feel the ‘MUST HAVE’ need to call the Maryland store and track down the dress. Honestly, I realize now I was just trying to make Mama Frenchie happy, because she loved the dress so much and was crushed when I told her.

I knew I really liked the fit of the Maggie Sottero dresses, after all, they have been voted “Best Fit in the Business”, and I figured if they discontinued the dress, they must have something similar but better, so I went to the website and found Anastasia.

She is A-line and organza, like Cherelle, but already has a sweetheart neckline, like I wanted. I had to try her on, so I called around to all the Maggie retailers in my area to see if anyone had Anastasia in their store. Unfortunately no one did, but I did find it at the largest Maggie retailer on the West Coast (45 minutes from my house), so I made an appointment as early as I could, and tried to round up the entourage again.

* I would like to point out that La Soie Bridal was great and I would recommend going there to anyone. What happened with my dress could have happened anywhere.

Did outside circumstances force you to find a 2nd “dream dress”?