Weddingbee Blog

I made appointments to visit two bridal shops with Mama Spaniel one day in late August. Dress shopping with Mama Spaniel was not the greatest of successes the first time, and so I made sure that I was very clear on my options before I took her back. Earlier in the week, I’d scheduled an appointment with the same shop that I’d had my earlier success in, because (1) I’d had some success, and (2) they price match. But Mama Spaniel really wanted to make a day of it, and so I made a second, earlier appointment at a shop just a few short blocks from my apartment.

I admit, I was nervous. The online reviews of the shop were lackluster (as they seem to be for most shops carrying inventory primarily below the $2,000 mark), and the manager who took my appointment by phone seemed less than thrilled to be speaking to an excited, enthusiastic bride like myself (I thought she might fall asleep on the phone with me. Maybe it’s just me, but I just do a lot better with higher energy people!). But the shop had a few things going for it. First, it was within walking distance from my apartment—fittings couldn’t possibly be any easier! And second, they carried Allure Bridals and Maggie Sottero gowns, and Dessy bridesmaid’s dresses, which is pretty much my holy trinity: my two top dress contenders are Allure, I was intrigued by at least one Maggie dress, and my bridesmaids are going to be wearing Dessy for sure. (They also carried La Sposa, an early favorite of mine!) So it was with low expectations but high hopes that, a few minutes late (as always; this is my mother!) we arrived at the tiny shop down the street… only to find one woman, clearly not an employee (and also, it turns out, not an English speaker), knitting in the corner.

And no one else. Anywhere. In the whole store. For at least five minutes. My fears! Confirmed! But Mama Spaniel and I took advantage of the opportunity to pointedly ignore the signs, posted all over the samples, that read “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH DRESSES. ASK FOR ASSISTANCE”—after all, there was no one to assist us, five minutes after our appointment was scheduled. The selection was small, but it was good, and my first choice dress at the time was one of three in the window, which I took to be a serendipitous sign. Eventually, the manager came out and, to her credit, didn’t yell at us for getting our grubby hands all over the sample dresses. She directed me to a seat, pulled out a binder full of pictures, and told me to mark the ones I liked, because they were all of the dresses that she had in the store. I must have marked at least ten dresses: one I’d tried before, the remainder were a mix of my choices and Mama Spaniel’s choices. First up was a La Sposa satin gown, Fana.

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I still don’t know why I marked this dress. Was it everything I ever hoped and dreamed? Heck no! It was practically nothing that I wanted in a dress: it was shiny, it was drape-y, it was kind of boring. But when I tried it on, it looked fabulous in oyster, a sort of dark champagne color. The draping made me look about six feet tall! I don’t think I’d ever seen myself in anything so slimming and flattering before. I came out of the dressing room feeling like a million bucks, while Mama Spaniel sat in a big cushy chair on the complete other side of the shop. “What do you think?” I asked, all smiles and enthusiasm. “I don’t know,” she said as she fidgeted with her cell phone and calendar. “Come closer; let me look at it.” Hm. This wasn’t the response I expected, or the scene as I’d envisioned it. “Um, it’s pretty long and kind of hard to walk; why don’t you get up and come here?” After some huffing and puffing, my mom put her stuff back in her purse and walked over, putting on her glasses to give me her most critical eye. In a little notebook, she wrote down the name of the dress and her response (”Maybe”). She criticized the fit (”Mom, it’s three sizes too big; it’s not supposed to fit”). She sat back down. Unnerved and in a nervous sweat (sorry, whoever tries that dress on next!), I went back for the second dress. I was disappointed by Mama Spaniel’s detached reaction to the dress that I had just tried and liked, but when I tried on the next, I realized the sweat I’d broken out in was actually a result of the heavy satin and not my nerves! So Fanal was actually, legitimately out. The next dress was another La Sposa gown, Ferida.

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I dutifully exited the fitting room to show Mama Spaniel, but I should have taken more note of how unhappy even the model looks in this dress: it was excruciatingly ugly on me. In fact, I was noticing a pattern: this lace and tulle La Sposa gown looked an awful lot like the last lace and tulle La Sposa gown I’d tried when I’d gone dress shopping with BM-Y in June. Since I can’t show you Ferida on me, I am going to swallow my pride and show you the other monstrosity now, strictly for your entertainment, because I love you all so:

(personal image, taken by BM5)

Let’s just say, I hated the dress. Mama Spaniel, on the other hand, seemed to really like it: she liked the sweetheart neckline, she fussed about the embellishments, and she didn’t seem to want to take “NO WAY” as an answer while she took notes. But I couldn’t even stand to be in the dress, and I ran away to the fitting room as soon as I could to try on number three: Allure Bridals 8601, my long-running top contender.

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It was the dress to which I compared all others, even when I wasn’t sure how much I loved it on me when I first tried it. (Did I tell you guys about that part? I put the dress on, looked in the mirror, and thought, “Oh, that’s too bad” before the saleslady and BM-Y both said “Wow”!)

But was it really The One™, this time?

Did you dress shop with your mom? Did she have different ideas for your dress than you did?