Wedding Blog

Brides are often told that when they find the dress—the one that will become their wedding dress, the one that they will walk down the aisle in and dance with their husband at their reception in—that it will hit them like a ton of bricks covered in sugary fondant and glittery tulle. Starry-eyed, they will make their way to the cash register where they will gush, “It’s perfect!” no matter the number of zeroes on the price tag.

Wait–let’s do a Zack Morris time out here. Am I coming across as a cynic? Jaded? If so, I apologize; it’s just that I’ve been down a few miles of hard road called “finding the dress”. It’s a road that started shortly after Mr. French Fries and I got engaged, and has been filled with a few, ahem, potholes. You see, I thought that this would be a relatively simple task. But then I made the mistake of reading too many magazines and too many (well-respected) wedding planning books, and I stumbled across a quote to the effect of “this will be the single most photographed piece of clothing that you will ever wear”. Oh! Well, now that you put it like that, there’s no pressure! I can just traipse down the aisle in any old thing hanging in my closet! It’s just going to be ingrained into our family’s history.

Looks like ribbon sashes aren’t just a current trend. Everything old is new again!
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So, I did what any logical bride would do. I avoided buying a dress like it was H1N1. (Did I just reference swine flu? Yikes.) I loved trying them on, but sealing the deal was a completely different story. I went to shop after shop with my sister, MOH French Fries, in tow and found myself swimming through tulle and crinoline in small dressing rooms with bad lighting and small mirrors. I must have tried on upwards of 40 at this point, and I couldn’t commit to any of them. The pressure was on, and I was stressing myself out by having “when you find the one, you’ll know!” running as a mantra in the back of my mind. Well-meaning friends and family members would ask how the wedding planning was going, and I soon learned that this was a slippery slope to the question of, “…so have you found a dress yet?” My stomach was tied in a knot bigger than a Miller Park stadium pretzel.

I had originally thought that I wanted something a little different. No beading, embroidery, crystals, or “bling” of any type. I quickly found out that dresses of this type were somewhat hard to come by. So I tried the blingy gowns on anyway, and I have to admit that some of them were pretty. So much so, that when I tried one on while shopping one day with Momma French Fries and MOH French Fries, I thought, ‘Well, hey! This actually might work.’ I had been looking for months, and thought that the likelihood of finding the dress was slim. I thought maybe that was something that the wedding industrial complex made up; something that happened to other girls, not to me. I was downright tired of looking for dresses, and I should have taken this as a sign to step back and take a break. Instead, I decided to purchase the dress.

A few weeks passed, and I had nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I wasn’t 100% sure about my decision. Sure, the dress was pretty… but was it really what I wanted? Did it even look good on me? I wasn’t able to take pictures at the shop (they reserved that right for ladies who had already purchased their gowns) so I didn’t even really know what it looked like on my body. In an attempt to calm my nerves, I went back to the shop to get some photographic evidence that this dress was going to be okay.

The shop assistant pulled out the sample and I slipped the gown on. “So far, so good,” I thought. The sample fit, and it was the size that I had ordered. I handed the assistant my camera to snap a few pictures, and I quickly made my way home to review them in detail. When I did… I was not happy with what I saw. I made a tear-filled phone call to Momma French Fries to reassure me and talk me off the ledge. I lamented to her that I hated the dress, that it was a horrible decision, that I should have waited to find a different dress. Momma FF assured me that we could “make it work”, Tim Gunn-style, but I wasn’t so sure…

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(To be continued!)

Did you have luck finding your dress right away? Or, did it take you some time to find your perfect fit?