Weddingbee Blog

I have to come right out and say it: I have really awesome bridesmaids. It’s pretty self explanatory, but after losing a bridesmaid after a fall-out, I’ve found myself really aware of my current friends and just how great they are.

They’re three completely different personalities, from different backgrounds, of different shapes and sizes. And even in spite of this, all of them have been nothing but positive and excited about the prospect of planning this wedding with me—again, each in their own different way.

If you’d asked me what sort of a dress I envisioned the girls wearing, it would’ve been something like this: a cocktail length gown, probably a v-neck, cross-over strap that was comfy and stylish but didn’t scream “bridesmaid”! In fact, I had this little number from Jim Hjelm as an inspiration:

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But that was what *I* liked.

And as we started making plans to look for dresses, I realised that I actually didn’t mind what sort of dress they wore. In fact, I was all for them deciding between themselves what they wanted to do—my only proviso was that the gown would be a shade of grey, preferably in slate, so that it would match the colour scheme I’ve had in my head for the past eighteen months.

We kept it simple at first; with just my Maid of Honour, Miss K, coming along with me. I really wanted to hit up a suburb in Western Sydney that was known for having several formalwear stores located right next to one another, thinking it would make for a fun shopping trip. After a few harrowing detours and some tears (I am NOT a good driver in unknown locations, trust me on that one) we made it into our first store. After having a brief look around there, nothing jumped out at either of us, so we kept looking. Miss K tried a few dresses on here and there, including this gorgeous retro ’50s gown that was just too cute:

Excuse the blur: it’s a picture of a picture!

It was completely adorable, but I could tell she didn’t feel 100% comfortable with it, so we kept on browsing. We hit store after store, and the second to last one was where we had a little luck. The store was ‘Brides in Love’ and I believe our words were “Knowing our luck, we’ll find the dresses in the most horribly named store on the street.” What’s that noise? Yep, me eating my words. We walked in there and ended up with TWO lovely gowns that Miss K modeled for me. One was a floor length chiffon gown, that looked a little like this:

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You’ll have to envision this in grey in your mind, ok?

It was very much what I’d envisioned, just in a longer length, and it was quite pretty. She also tried on a shimmery satin number, that we were initially a little frightened of—satin doesn’t leave much to the imagination, after all. But she tried it on all the same, and we were completely blown away by how beautiful it looked on.

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Again, pretend in your mind that this is grey with the silver bling. Cute, no?

So we had two top contenders: it was time to call in the rest of the party. The very next day, thanks to a little good luck with work schedules, all three bridesmaids met me at the bridal store. I told them my spiel: that I had two good possibilities that I wanted them to try on, but after that they were to go crazy in the store and pick out styles that THEY loved. After trying them all on, we could make a decision: do we match, or do we go with separates? Miss K had already decided she liked one gown from the previous day, Miss E decided that she was comfortable in that gown too, and Miss H tried on a few different styles, but looked equally gorgeous in all of them.

Between them, they decided that it would look better if they all bought the same style, same colour—and it’s THEIR choice: so “matchy-matchy” it is! I’m going to have three HOT bridesmaids, each rocking their own grey satin floor-length gown and I couldn’t be happier! And to make things even sweeter, all three girls already paid for their entire dress purchase UP FRONT while we were ordering, which means when they arrive in a few months time, all I need to do is go on in and claim them. Too easy! I tell you, I’m a lucky, lucky bride-to-be.

Did you or your girls decide on their bridesmaids’ dresses? Did you go ‘matchy-matchy’ or all unique?