Playing Dress Up

So I have to admit, I love playing dress up. Always have, probably always will. And getting a wedding dress is pretty much like playing dress up for grown-ups. Needless to say, trying on wedding dresses has pretty much been my very favorite thing in wedding planning so far.

The very first time I went dress shopping was a mere 2 days after getting engaged. I was finally “allowed” to go do it and I couldn’t wait. However, that day was more of a fun time with my girls than anything else. There was only one dress that I liked that day: Maggie Sottero’s Grace, but it definitely didn’t give me the “this is it” feeling.

Fast forward a couple of months. I had graduated from college and gotten settled in my new apartment when my FMIL suggested we go dress shopping. So we drove down to Michelle’s Bridal Shoppe in Urbana because we’d heard it was the best in downstate Illinois and it’s just an hour down the road from my in-laws’ house.

Going into dress shopping I wanted pick-ups. Maybe not the crazy huge cupcake look of some dresses, but subtle pick-ups like on my bridesmaid's dress for my sister's wedding. Our assistant Melissa, picked up a new Alfred Angelo bridal gown in the same style. I was so excited, but proceeded to pick up a good 20 other dresses to check out just in case. They’re all so pretty, I couldn’t resist! At first Melissa seemed appalled I would want to try on that many, but I figured if I was going to pay a thousand dollars for a dress, I was going to at least try on every other one in the county.

I tried on the Alfred Angelo dress and decided right away it was just not the one for me. I’m awfully petite, and the dress just seemed to swallow me whole. Disappointed, I kept plugging away through the rest of the dresses. Despite my desire to have something drastically different from my sister’s dress (she’s getting married this October, I’m getting married next June) most of the dresses were simple ball gowns or a-lines. That’s not to say they weren’t gorgeous; they even looked pretty good on me, but none of them gave me that certain feeling.

These are the three that I ended up liking the best:





In the end I liked the third one the best with it's gorgeous train and even convinced myself that it could be the dress I get married in, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

But here’s where things get interesting:

The one dress I tried on that differed from the a-line ball gown type dress, was a mermaid shaped Maggie Sottero gown. I didn’t actually like the dress itself (something about the beading just seemed strange to me) but I kept coming back to the picture of myself in the dress. Finally my little sister pointed out that though the dress was just so-so, the shape of it looked fantastic on me! It was at that point that I decided I needed to switch gears and stop looking at dresses with pick-ups and focus more on the mermaid shape. It would give that little bit of something unique without a skirt so big that it overwhelmed me.

The dress that started it all:


I did have a great time at Michelle's and I'd recommend it to anyone, but there just wasn't anything there for me.