Weddingbee Blog

As I outlined in my last post, before I even set foot in a bridal salon I was already a bona fide wedding-dress expert. I had put in the (wo)man hours, flipped through countless magazines, scoured a plethora of websites. My mom’s a college professor and I’m a grad student, so we decided that knocking the whole dress task off the wedding to-do list would best be accomplished during the summer months, when our schedules would be most flexible. With my massive wedding-dress-preparation ego, I made my first ever wedding-dress appointment, expecting to waltz right in, immediately and decisively pick a winner (trying on a handful at most), and reign victorious over the wedding-dress hunt.

Um, no. Not so much. Let’s start at the beginning.

As I mentioned before, Johnstown isn’t exactly swimming in a deep wedding-vendor pool. As a result, it was a no-brainer as to which salon would be the first visit…Celestial Brides, Johnstown’s only full-service wedding salon. I’d shopped there for prom dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, mother-of-the-groom dresses, and my sister-in-law’s wedding dress previously, so I was pretty well acquainted with the salon, its staff, and its services. Nevertheless, I was still a bit antsy about kicking off this shopping process, since there’s so much riding on it: you only get one wedding dress in your life, and everyone looks at you all day in it, and your pictures will last forever, and all the episodes of Say Yes to the Dress you’ve watched over the past months have taught you that you’re supposed to find the one and not settle for anything less. But, remember, I was an expert! No sweat!

I walked into the appointment armed with pictures and style numbers of all of my current faves. Unfortunately, Celestial Brides didn’t have any of those exact dresses in stock, but they worked to find dresses that were similar enough to give me an idea of how that silhouette or detail would look on me. Now comes the fun part. We walked into the bridal room of the store, where there were probably 50 dresses in those ubiquitous plastic zip-up bags. Fifty—not as overwhelming as the stock room you see on TV at Kleinfeld, but enough to get me a wee bit frazzled.

I tried my best to hide my nerves and worries as I tried on a handful of dresses. To be honest, this appointment was almost a full year ago, and I only remember two dresses I tried on.

Image via Wedding Inspirasi / Dress by Eve of Milady (style unknown—sorry!)

Image via Pronuptia Paris / Dress by Pronovias (style Mahon)

The reason I remember these two dresses? They made me feel something, just not in a good way. The first dress made me feel like a cupcake.

Image via Deviant Art

It was so big at the bottom but so fitted at the top, I just felt like a teeny tiny dollop of frosting perched atop a massive pastry. I love cupcakes, but for the eating, not the wearing. The second dress made me feel like this:

Image via Martin Rogen

Mmmm-mmmm, check out those curves! Don’t get me wrong, I know I have a Gumby-esque physique, but that doesn’t mean I need my wedding dress to help solidify that fact. The second dress was pretty and feminine, but it did nothing for me, and I’m a girl who needs every piece of clothing I wear to do something, anything for me. Long story short, no winners in this bunch, but the staff at the salon were super nice and, on the plus side, I did walk away from the appointment with a few key pieces of information.

1. I am horrible at figuring out what a dress will look like on a person after viewing it on a hanger or in a plastic garment bag. HORRIBLE.
2. My certainty about lace and all that jazz was a little bit shaken. Celestial Brides didn’t have a ton of dresses that matched what I was looking for, so maybe lace dresses weren’t that popular any more and I was clinging to the end of a trend?

Could it be that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t know as much about dresses as I had previously supposed?! In a matter of about 60 minutes, I went from having the wedding-dress industry wrapped around my pinkie finger to groveling for assistance, reassurance, and guidance. Kind of like this:

Image via The Daily Puppy

Did you have a less-than-spectacular first dress appointment? What caused your bumps in the road?