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When I visited IL a few months ago, my soon-to-be MIL and I went to Gigi’s Closette and we found the PERFECT dress for her!
The dress label said “Gigi’s Closette”. We assumed it was from “Gigi’s Closette” since the other dresses had labels like “Yolanda” or “Giovanni”. The dress was a dream and we knew this was the one. We were told the dress would be available on December 8th. In a bit of a “we gotta act fast” mindset, we ordered the dress, paid the half deposit and left.
We got a phone call THREE days later. They said, “We have the dress. Please come pick it up.” I mean, I was excited to see the dress, but they told us it would be here in December! Something was a little sketchy…
Since I’m in NYC and my FMIL is in IL, she went to the store to pick up the dress. But much to her surprise, the dress label said “Montage by Moncheri”. She questioned the sales attendant, but due to her limited English, she left the store frustrated and a bit hurt.
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Yay! Mama Milkshake number two (Mr. Milkshake’s mom) bought two hot little numbers for herself. It’s so nice to see our mothers in dresses, so here’s her very own tribute in the few photos I was able to snap of her. This particular store in Vancouver’s Chinatown had tonnes of dresses that were in the $50-99 price range and alterations seemed to be complimentary! They have a good handful of these stores in Vancouver’s Chinatown, and I realized a little while ago that Seattle offers nothing of the sort. My friend rented a Cheong Sam from a local Seattle shop for her wedding because that was the only option.
So you know what the others are wearing, but I forgot about my mom! A few weeks ago, I spent some torturous time at the mall looking for my mother’s outfit. She gave me total decision-making authority, and you know how Miss Coconut loves that!
I’m not going to lie, it was brutal. Lots of the dresses were just terrible. Full of sequins and glittery material. My mother doesn’t work at the Golden Nugget! Not to mention finding something at a reasonable price?!?! I mean, seriously! After much searching at Dillard’s no less, I found a blush two piece number that I thought would look great on my mom. The price? $72. Oh yeah.
I know that lots of moms don’t want to look like “moms” and I can respect that. For me though, I love a tailored jacket. I think it looks really classic. My mom’s outfit has a jacket, but it’s not a plain one - the cuffs are really cute and there’s a tiny bit of sparkle.
Doesn’t she look great? I think the color looks perfect with her dark hair! The dress needs to be hemmed a tiny bit, but other than that it ROCKS!
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The lady rocking the 1980s perm and pearls is my mom. The little gremlin shoving food in its mouth is me (some things never change.)
I love buying dresses. Being as tall as I am, dresses tend to be one of the few clothing items I can buy without any fuss or muss, so when I see one I like and it fits, I go for it.
Last weekend, I took my mom out for a day at Nordstrom and whatever else the mall had to offer. I’ll have none of that matronly dress business for my mom! Rewearable cocktail dresses here we come. She’s the only peron I know who perhaps has more energy than me to do this - although you readers best know me as the bee who could hit up three or four bridal shops in one day and try on every single non-ballgown dress in each store (and then do it all over again later that week at new stores).
I was incapacitated the rest of the night and hit the pillow at 8 o’clock with a migraine. She, on the other hand, jumped in and out of dozens of dresses, then came back to my house to cook a roast and whip up dinner, then weeded my huge garden in under half an hour at dusk - this weeding task would have taken me the entire weekend.
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Over the past couple of months, both my mom and Mr. Dahlia’s mom had looked for dresses, with no luck. During this time, probably every major department store in Cleveland was visited by one or both of them- but the selection of dresses was just awful. They wanted similar things- silk shantung or dupioni cocktail length dresses. My mom was looking for blue, and Mr. Dahlia’s mom was looking for green. Now, this doesn’t seem like it should be a difficult thing to find, but it was proving extremely frustrating.
On a whim, I scoped out the bridesmaid and occasion dresses at Watters, with the thought that maybe they would be able to order dresses that would suit them- and both found dresses they liked.
Cue The Perfect Bride, a salon in Rocky River (a suburb of Cleveland). Tipped off on the Watters website that they carried most of the Watters line, I set out with Mr. Dahlia’s mom to scope it out and help her find a dress. And she did:
Watters style 9973; her dress will be a paler green (cilantro) than the midori green shown.
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Mama Canary had been having the hardest time finding dresses at home, so one of our big goals was to find her the perfect dress in Hong Kong. We had strolled through Kimberley Road on three separate occasions without any luck, until finally we stepped into Noel Chu, one of the busier shops on Kimberley Road. One of the mistakes Mama and I made on our first few trips to Kimberley Road was just browsing what was on the racks– which usually only showcases the most popular rental dresses (which don’t often parallel U.S. fashion tastes).
The storefront of Noel Chu’s shop on Kimberley Road.
Fall issues of fashion magazines and runway shows are my favorite, and lately they’ve been really helpful. Like other young, cool, and fashionable mother of the brides, my mom and Mr. C’s mom were really lamenting the lack of nice dresses out there. They both want something that’s elegant but not matronly, yet not too sexy. Except the criteria differs in that my mom is very small and petite and Mr. C’s mom is quite tall (like Mr. C!)
My mom prefers a short tea length dress, which may not work since the bridesmaids are wearing tea length dresses, and the last thing I want is for her to look like a bridesmaid. We shopped around at a few bridal stores but didn’t find anything. Then we browsed through my latest issue of W and found a lot ideas. Though most of them are couture or runway gowns, we could probably have them custom fitted and made in similar styles for a lot less.
Here’s what we found (most images scanned from September 07’s W magazine unless otherwise noted)…
Since my sister’s wedding, I’ve gotten a few inquiries about my mom’s dress. I’m planning a whole series of tips/tricks/lessons I’ve learned from my sister’s wedding but for now, I’ll tell you about the adventures of shopping for my mom’s dress.
Picking out a dress was one of the things my mom was most worried about prior to the wedding…and the idea that she’d need to buy TWO dresses in a year made it even worse. Living 3,000 miles from my sister and I certainly didn’t help either. She’d perused the Nordstrom’s website and found a lot of promising options, but was disappointed by the selection at the actual store. So she made plans in July to fly up to Chicago from Dallas to go MOB dress shopping and to look for bridal gowns with me.
The MOB dress has been found! Hooray!I really appreciated all the wonderful tips (and encouragement) from my previous post, Mama Trauma. When Mama Peppermint and I set out to find her dress, I was definitely nervous. I imagined hours of disappointment and frustration as we searched for something that would fit the bill. In truth, we did have some low-points, but all in all, we found a winner and actually had a great time shopping!
I have to second the tip to avoid bridal salons. The selection was modest and the prices were very high. Granted, we only browsed a small number of bridal salons with MOB dresses, but from that limited experience, we were disappointed.
When we arrived at the mall, our first stop was Nordstrom’s. I have to agree with Miss Corn, the selection was very limited. Online we had found a few things, but none of that was in the store! Fortunately, we managed to remain hopeful and continued on our way…
As it has been noted MANY times on the bee, it is next-to impossible to find a decent Mother of the Bride dress out there these days. The options seem to be:
- Boring beige (albeit with sparkles) MOB dress ordered from a bridal store. To be honest, this dress comes in a rainbow of colors, but it is still prohibitively expensive which is worse when you realize it will only get one wearing.
Does this look like your Mom??
I know I’m not the first to complain about this, but why is finding a Mother of the Bride Dress so hard?? My mom is petite which has made it that much harder. Not only can we not find any ‘regular’ dresses, but now we have an even smaller market to look at!
After months of searching, my momma *finally* found something to wear to the wedding.
Momma Eggplant always has a difficult time finding clothes that fit right because she’s pretty petite (which is where I inherited my 5’2″ genes). Usually the petite section of stores don’t have much to offer, but she found a simple pink dress on sale at Nordstroms for $108. My mother isn’t one who cares much for shopping or cutting edge fashion, so for the wedding she wanted to keep it simple and buy something off the rack. She’s extremely practical when it comes to clothes. If it’s comfortable, durable, appropriate, and most of all, inexpensive, she’ll wear it.
Now, where I inherited my awful shopping habit, I have no idea. 
Well after two full weekends of shopping over the past few months, my mother and I finally found her a dress this past weekend! Hooray! My mother is petite and very fashionable, but has her own style. It would just not do to have her in a typical “mother of the bride” outfit. We went to every department store in NYC and finally found “the dress” at Bergdorf Goodman (on sale, thank goodness). I only have a quick shot of her in the dress with a camera phone — I promise to take more later.
My mother in her dress:
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