Weddingbee Blog

To be perfectly honest, bridesmaids’ dresses are not something in which I am willing to be terribly invested. You have all heard plenty about how much trouble I have dressing myself—and you expect me to dress a bunch of other people who all have different styles and different body types?

Um, H to the L nooooooo thank you.

That said, we did want to have some coherence in our bridal brigade - the people we asked to be in our bridal brigade are super important and incredibly helpful, and we wanted them to be recognizable. We also wanted them to be comfortable, and, especially given our current relationship with money (read: we have very little and are still trying to be alive, keep our pets alive, and plan our wedding), wanted them to spend an appropriate amount of money for them, whether that meant a lot o’ monies or a little bit o’ monies. This meant having a lot of flexibility.

First, we narrowed it down as far as colors go: navy. That was easy.

Then we emailed out pictures of dresses we liked, and then various people emailed us back. Simple, right?

Well, yeah, except their emails said things like:

“What about this dress in brown?” or “Hey, when are you going to be sending out your invitations?” or “I am thinking of wearing a pantsuit.”

Okay, the pantsuit would have been fine, but no, not that dress in brown. All we picked was one color! Do everything else however you want! After struggling with my frustration and guilt for a few minutes—we really weren’t asking much, right? Was it wrong of us to dictate a color? Should we be offering to buy our brigade’s dresses?—I realized that it was not that big a deal. So I wrote back, said blue only, and rumor has it people have dresses.

Here are some dresses we considered, modeled by my lovely MOH:

Are you really making me stand here so you can take pictures for your blog?

Fine, I’ll tolerate your crazy Seahorse antics.

Effortlessly beautiful, with me looking, ahem, casual in the background

I looooved this dress! I loved it like a dinosaur. Hi sister! It looks like you’re trying to be a dinosaur here! It’s safe to say this one’s a no?

uh, if i hold my breath and arch my shoulders it stays on…

I’m pretty sure no one got any of these dresses, and I’m pretty sure at least two people have their dresses. And I’m just not willing to be stressed out about it.

Miss Octopus said something interesting the other day about bridesmaids’ dresses:

I don’t necessarily think bridesmaid dresses need to be re-wearable. I think they should fall soundly within a reasonable budget (however “reasonable” is defined for the women in your party) and I think they shouldn’t be something that the bridesmaids would be embarrassed to wear again (a highly unflattering cut or material, for example), but other than that, I dunno. Wearing a dress that the bride chooses, even if it’s not necessarily something you’d choose yourself, is kind of a hallmark of the bridesmaid experience, I think, and it’s one that I didn’t feel compelled to revolutionize.

I think there’s a lot of freedom in that. And if I was the bridesmaid, freedom for me would be not making a decision: hand me an outfit, I will wear it and try to look good in it. But for us, now? It was wayyy less stress to let people do what they want.

Where are you on the spectrum? Do you want your options, or your dress handed to you? Do you even notice bridesmaids at weddings? Tell me about your favorite dress! Readygo!