Weddingbee Blog

Going dress shopping with Mama Ticket was quite the experience. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that it was in fact the most painful wedding task we have conquered to date. That being said, it did not start out this way. We did things a little unconventionally with the Ticket wedding. Mama Ticket insisted that FMIL Ticket could pick her dress first and then she would find one to match. (Mama Ticket wanted to wait as long as possible to find a dress while trying to lose weight, and she didn’t want FMIL to have to wait on her.) I was perfectly fine with this arrangement.

And thus FMIL Ticket went out and found (in my opinion) a very beautiful and perfect-for-the-wedding dress. She will be wearing this beauty (minus the one awkward sleeve):

Image via Wedding Shoppe Inc. / Dress by Jasmine Bridal

It met any criteria I could have had (though I didn’t provide any), and it was burgundy (despite what your monitor might show, it is in fact a maroon/burgundy color in person) and floor length. And thus these were the two criteria I requested Mama Ticket stick to when choosing a dress. I wanted the parents to coordinate with the bridal party (not matchy-matchy but a complimentary color), and burgundy was perfect—a darker shade of our fabulous pink.

So I excitedly prepped Mama Ticket to go dress shopping. I was anticipating a day of fun at David’s Bridal—choose a dress she was comfortable with and go home happy! Boy was I naïve…

Mama Ticket and I set up an appointment at David’s Bridal for a Saturday morning. We went in and quickly found that there were not many options in the color scheme we wanted, after Mama Ticket tried on a few dresses and I overheard our consultant tell her, “You don’t NEED to pick out the color she [read: ME] wants. You don’t have to match—just get her to change her mind.” I decided that was enough of David’s Bridal and that particular consultant (who, by the way, was my first consultant in my own dress drama at David’s Bridal), and we left. From there we went to Alfred Angelo and waited awhile to be helped. (We didn’t have an appointment; we just walked in.) After about 20 minutes of not a soul in the shop acknowledging our existence (after the woman at the front desk said we would be helped shortly) and seeing they also didn’t have anything in our color scheme of choice, we decided to try elsewhere.

We headed up the road to a little bridal shop (we knew it was a little pricey, BUT they carried the same brand as FMIL Ticket’s dress) and looked around. We found a few dresses in the color range we were looking for, and an assistant walked up and offered to help us. We asked her to set Mama Ticket up in a dressing room with a few of the dresses we saw, and she agreed to see if any other dresses came in the colors we were looking for. (Though it was a big red flag when she said to me, “Red is red. There’s really no difference in any of these.” Um…excuse me? The dress wasn’t even red!) After trying on a few dresses that turned out to be no good by Mama Ticket’s standards, the assistant brought in a beautiful dress that was exactly the same color as FMIL Ticket’s (not a requirement, but would have been nice)! Except it was $425…which was a touch over the budget Mama Ticket had in mind. (I certainly didn’t want her spending nearly as much on her dress as my own, either.) So we left.

Did you have sticker shock when shopping with your mom/girls?