Weddingbee Blog

My dress search was foundering before it even began. I had no idea where to start. Then out of the blue my fabulous friend texted me saying that she would love to go to Running of the Brides with me here in D.C. For anyone who doesn’t know what Running of the Brides is, it is very similar to Running of the Bulls except with crazed brides going after discount wedding dresses. I don’t know which is more intimidating: fanatical brides or wild bulls. I was intrigued, but would Mama CS go for it?!

Shockingly she did! For anyone who knows Mama CS, you would understand why that is shocking. She is a very cool and collected cucumber who doesn’t like to be stressed (just like me!). Running of the Brides is all about stress. Mama CS was all in, though, because if there is anything she will deal with stress over it is a discount. We marked our calendars for June 30th.

Now you can’t just go to Running of the Brides cold turkey. We needed to set up some dress appointments to find out what style we would be searching for. Looking through 1,700 dresses with hundreds of other frenzied brides is not the time to be deciding if you look good in a trumpet style. So we set up appointments for the next time I would be home at David’s Bridal and La Bella Moda for dress “research.”

No dress appointment is complete without an entourage, so one Sammie sister, my godmother, Mama CS, and Mama CS’s mama (Grandma CS, if you will) all made the trip. They are so good to me. Our first stop was David’s Bridal. The purpose of the trip was to try on as many styles as possible to narrow down which ones I looked best in. Of course I looked fabulous in all of them, but the ones that stood out were the narrower A-lines. Our consultant was very helpful, and she mostly just pulled our suggestions since our group was very vocal. Too much chatter, not enough pictures of dresses!

Style #SWG9902 / Image via David’s Bridal

Style 9V9743

Very similar to Style 9WG3243, but not

My brief adventure with straps (style discontinued)

This was the crowd favorite. (Style 8CT314)

Blah! (Style 9T9642)

*Sorry for the poor image quality. Phone pictures are no good.*

There were probably 20 more dresses tried on at that appointment, and if I say it was exhausting that would be an understatement. I had no intention of purchasing a dress at David’s Bridal, so we forged on. After a quick break for lunch, we headed to our second appointment. At this point in the day I was willing to give up on this appointment since we already had a style we knew to look for at Running of the Brides and trying on dresses is hard! Thank our lucky stars we went because La Bella Moda is where I found my dress!

I don’t have any pictures from this appointment (no pictures allowed), but I did get to try on a couple of my inspiration dresses. I am going to leave you hanging, though, because we came back to Bella Moda twice before I actually purchased the dress, so I will go into more detail then…hopefully to entice you to keep reading.

Did you find your dress when you were just “researching”? Anyone else try on their dress three times before pulling the trigger?

Coming up next…Running of the Brides!