Weddingbee Blog

I mean, pants are a totally cool wedding-attire option for people of any gender. But let’s face it: I was going for the dress. So I have decided it’s time to start the story of my dress shopping.

First let me tell you about the anxiety this caused me. I may have mentioned this before, but I am not exactly built like a Barbie doll. I mean, I’m plus-sized. There, I said it. I wear a street size 16 or 18. And let’s face it, gown samples are not typically sized to accommodate me. So I had bad visions of how this was going to go. I imagined dresses I couldn’t get on my body. I pictured salespeople trying to convince me to hold things up in front of me to get an idea. I envisioned seeing tons of things on the rack that I could never even hope to try on. Shopping for me is frustrating on the best of days, and this was not looking like it would be the best of days.

So I delayed. I waited. I put things off. My friends at work were watching anxiously. I was really kind of waiting too long. This promised to be a difficult shopping experience, and I didn’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting. But I was. So finally one of my friends (the same girl from my STD [*snort*] stamping adventure), the divine Mrs. M, took charge. We took a day off from work together and decided to dress shop.

In typical cool but type-A fashion, I made a spreadsheet. I lined up appointments for us at four bridal salons, which were carefully placed according to location, traveling time, and appointment time. It was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself.

This is the anal-retentive dress-shopping spreadsheet. Yes, this is what I do.

And, of course, I set out with an idea in mind. After much dress stalking online, I had a gold-standard dress that I wanted, but of course it didn’t exist in the state of Maryland. So it was my inspiration picture as we started our adventure.

The look I set out to get. This is Jasmine Collection F964. (Source)

Now, I am issuing a warning in advance. I had all of these pictures of different dresses stored neatly on my iPhone. But then it died: some kind of battery problem. The fine folks at Apple replaced it no problem, but since it was dead it couldn’t be powered on. And without powering it on, I couldn’t get to the pictures we had of the dresses I tried on. So I’m going to find stock pictures when I can and supplement with the real thing when I do have it.

Were you intimidated by the dress hunt, or did you dive in with reckless abandon?