I booked an appointment at a bridal salon for the Saturday mum was visiting. I’d also asked Mr. CB’s mum and bridesmaid A to come along. Sadly, A had a wedding shower to throw for her brother’s fiancee that same day so she couldn’t make it.
On Friday, mum and I found ourselves at a loose end downtown after I’d finished work, so we decided to go to Echo Bridal, a store that just opened up in a newly renovated building downtown. We had no appointment, but it was 2:30PM on a Friday, so we weren’t expecting crowds. When we got there, there was no one there but Phyllis the saleslady, so we dove in! She gave us some clothes pegs, and told us to mark the dresses I wanted to try, and she’d collect them up for us. Echo also does evening wear—those ball gowns are mainly on the top floor of the building in their other store, but there were a few coloured dresses in the wedding shop that Phyllis said could be ordered in any colour, including white and ivory. I was drawn to one of those, so that got a peg. I searched for short dresses, and there were only a couple in the whole store, so they got pegs. Mum was picking big dresses. 
The first thing we noticed was that most of these dresses were well under $1000. We hadn’t talked budget at that point in time, but my only experience with wedding dresses was Say Yes to the Dress (which I may or may not have bought on iTunes) where the associates struggle to find things in the $2000 range.
Eventually, I started trying things on!
I’m not sure why the first one is a photo of me in the mirror, not a photo of just me. Mum being an arty photographer?
Many of Echo’s dresses are from Turkey, and we never learned the designer’s name, so right now we’ve just got these few photos, my memory, and descriptive prose.
The one above was way huger than I ever imagined, but the bottom layers of the skirt were cut into points, which made me feel like a fairy or an elf, which was fun. This one was discontinued, so we could have only bought the sample. The frill at the top of the bodice was coming undone, and it was much too big.
Please excuse the ‘durrrr’ face in the first photo! (You can see Phyllis holding it tight in the mirror in the first photo.)
This was one of the dresses that could come in any colour you wanted. I loved the one shoulder strap, and the crinkle fabric that was inset in the middle of the skirt. It was soft and flowy and lots of fun. It made me feel a bit like I was wearing a sari, and a bit like a princess, probably because of this dress:
Princess Di
I think I only ever told mum I felt like a princess—I never mentioned that I had a specific princess in mind! The problem with the beloved purple dress was that if I wanted to see it in white/ivory, I’d have to order it. As in, pay for it, sight unseen. That was a little hard for us to do, so we left to think about it, plus we still had the next day’s appointment at another place! Mum and I both agreed that we liked Phyllis, and I wanted to be able to get her her commission by buying a dress there.
On Saturday we went to Ethos Bridal, which has some polar opposite reviews available online. I chalked up bad reviews of dress places to brides being really emotional about their dresses, which is fair, but not unbiased. I felt comfortable there, and didn’t have a bad experience. That said, I didn’t find a great dress there, either. I did find my first real, live, in-person tea-length dress, though! I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to take photos, so I took some sneaky ones with my phone in the dressing room. I don’t remember there being any labels in the dresses either (THAT is annoying!). Because I took sneaky pics, all the clips had been taken out of the back, so the fit isn’t the greatest.
Even when it was clipped, and the lady brought a birdcage veil (this was the only place that did the veil and accessories thing)… I was underwhelmed. It made me feel very very young, like I was 12. That was the moment when tea-length thing left the building.
Everybody liked the lace though, so the lady brought us this:
It was a sample, and quite nice. We asked about what buying a sample would entail—there was a rip around the zip in the back, and obvious signs of wear. The lady kept reassuring us that they could fix it, but we were all skeptical. There was no spare fabric in it, because it fit like a glove! I also think the shop lady sensed weakness at that point, because she did up the pushiness. It is her job though, so we left it to go walk and think.
As we were walking I realized that we were near my dream bridal store. I hadn’t booked an appointment there, because mum and I wanted to go somewhere that had Pronovias dresses. That was the brand of dress she wore on her wedding, and I liked some of their designs I saw on the web. Ethos was the only one listed in Calgary that sold them, although Echo does, too. But with dress fail at Ethos, we thought we’d try the dream store.
I don’t think it was the lady’s fault we didn’t find a dress at Ethos. At that point I was still in the tea-length mindset (unless it was the purple dress!) and when that was blown out of the water, I was left with…no idea of what I wanted. I think it is good I was shocked out of that early, but it was definitely a jolt to the brain.
Next up: the store of my dreams!
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