The Stress Of The Dress, Part 3: The Happy Conclusion!

Let's see, where were we? Oh yes, I left you hanging right before my last appointment of the day!

But before I continue, on the off chance that Mr. Cola is reading this, STOP! Please no looking past this point!


{Source}

Ok, now that it's safe....

My last appointment was at Bay Area Bridal, which was probably the nicest looking of all the stores we visited on our marathon day. I entered my contact info into their computer system, and my super nice consultant took my sample photos to look for similar dresses while I browsed through their books for additional styles for her to pull. She loaded the dressing room with about 8 dresses, and we got started.

What dress did she pull out first for me to try? The Sophia Tolli Alexandria (Y1810) dress that had gotten me actually excited about dress shopping! And that's when the magic happened. As she pulled it on, it was about up to my belly button and I was looking in the mirror in the dressing room, and I just knew it was going to be THE ONE!

Apparently my mom and sister knew too, because I came out of the dressing room with a happy and determined look on my face. My sister took several pictures, even though I'm not 100% sure they were allowed, but there were no signs saying we couldn't!

And without further ado, here are some pics of me in my dress (except I ordered it in Spun Gold, not the diamond white that I tried on)!!!

(I do sort of have a smug, self-satisfied look on my face, don't I? All I was thinking was "I LOVE THIS DRESS!" over and over in my mind.)

I just love the beading on the bodice, and the crystals and pearls are going to pop even more in the light gold color, plus I won't look as pale. After trying on this dress, I tried on another Sophia Tolli in the spun gold color, and I was 110% set, not just on the dress, but on the color too.

I tried to PhotoShop it to the gold color, this is sort of close to what it will look like:

(ignore the white veil, I haven't gotten around to adjusting the color on that yet.)

After trying the gold dress, my consultant asked me what I thought and I said I wanted the dress! She responded, "don't you want to try any of the other dresses?" to which I replied "Nope!" I knew I'd found the perfect dress, as stereotype-ish as that sounds. Paperwork filled out, half down on $1,190 less the 15% discount they offered me and I walked (skipped?) out of the store, soooo super happy! (as a side note, I actually thought the dress was $1100, not $1190, but oh well. Every place we went seemed really good about rounding down the dress prices they quoted us. $90 extra isn't a big deal in the whole scheme of things, but might be something to watch out for if you're dress shopping)

And because I'm an all-things-wedding-related-internet-stalker, here are some more beautiful pictures of the dress I've found online:

{Source for pics 1-3, Source for pics 4-5, Source for pics 6-8}

The last three pictures show the spun gold color really well. I know my mom wanted me to get something in ivory, but I've had the idea in my head forever that I wanted a champagne/gold toned dress, and it looks so much better on my impossible-to-tan Irish skin tone! And as my sister said, the gold has so much more pizazz! I think, if possible, I'm even more excited now after finding these photos!

Did you "just know" when you tried on your dress that it was the one, or did you keep looking after trying it on, just to be sure?

The Stress Of The Dress, Part 2

In my last post I showed you what style of dress I was looking for, so now I'll share with you how I actually found "the one."

As I already mentioned, I had to schedule as many appointments into one day as possible because my little sis was in town. I used a combo of Yelp reviews and Google Maps to find salons in the area that had reasonable prices and allowed pictures to be taken. I realized early on in my bridal shop research that I'd have better luck in my price range looking in the South Bay, instead of in San Francisco. Here is where the day took us (copied from Google Maps):


First up was The Wedding Gown Superstore, a pretty sketchy sounding shop with mainly off the rack dresses. But I read a couple reviews of people finding good deals, so thought it was worth a shot. Our appointment was at 10am, and upon entering the store you see a gate with all the dresses behind it; apparently only you and one guest are allowed past the gate to see the dresses, so my poor mom was banished to the waiting room. They only had 2 racks of orderable dresses to choose from, and I only found two that were okay enough to try on.

The first one had ruching and some beading on the bodice, but it had a weird bubble bottom that I didn't like very much. However it was $775, so the price wasn't too bad. The second one had beading on the bodice too, but I didn't like the pattern of it once it was on. Oh, and the Yelp reviews of this place weren't exactly right, I'd picked the place in part because I read that pictures were allowed, which was true, except you had to PAY for the pictures (rolling eyes). I didn't like either dress enough to bother with that, so on our way we went.

Our second stop was Group USA, which is a mall store mainly focused on prom dresses, but with a small bridal section. I didn't have very high hopes because I didn't really like any of the dresses featured on their website, but it was at this store 3 years ago that I'd seen a near perfect dress, so thought it would be worth looking at. I found 4 dresses there that I was willing to try on, but all were duds (although the price was right at this store, I think the most expensive one I tried on was $699). Pictures were allowed here, but there were none worth taking. The only good that came out of this stop was that I confirmed that the drop waist style just doesn't work for my body type.

After lunch my next appointment was at Elegant Lace Bridal, and things started looking up here. This isn't a super snooty high-end salon, but they do allow you to look on the racks and tag which ones you want to try with little hanger rings, which I liked. I found about 8-10 contenders that looked interesting in the bags, and headed into the changing room with my consultant, Sonia. The first dress she put on me was Maggie Sorrento Lavina, which was $1075 and had the look of a drop waist, but was really a fitted A-line.


(Sly pics my sister took with her phone. Another misleading Yelp review said pictures were ok here, but there were signs everywhere to the contrary.)

I REALLY liked this dress. It was different than what I'd been looking at, because it had lots more ruching than beading and a faux sweetheart neckline, but it really made me look like I had a waist! I'd never really paid much attention to Maggie dresses before, since I assumed they were out of my price range, but this one was really great.

Next I tried on another Maggie in gold, which I really like the color of on my skin tone, compared to the Lavina dress in ivory, but I didn't care for the rest of the dress very much. Third I tried on yet another Maggie, which was very flattering (all of the Maggies really accentuated the hourglass shape), but I didn't like the asymmetrical beading style, and it was diamond white.


At this point I was starting to get confused. I knew I had liked the first dress, but was having trouble remembering it, so Sonia had me try it on again. I still really liked it, but had to call my sister over to ask for an honest opinion on if the asymmetrical ruching made "the girls" look uneven. She said 'no' and I assumed I was being crazy, but we could totally see it later when we reviewed the pictures:


(Sorry for the boob shot, but see, I'm NOT a crazy-nitpicker, one really does look bigger than the other!)

I still REALLY liked this dress though, but felt I couldn't buy it yet without going to the rest of my appointments for the day. I had to be sure, and I was only 97% on this one. So I thanked Sonia (who was great, very helpful, and boy, does she know how to lace a corset!), and we went on our way to the next shop.

Or, actually, we went on our way to the next, next shop. We'd spent way to long at Elegant Lace, and I missed my appointment at Trudy's Brides. That wasn't such a bad thing, except I knew they carried Sophia Tolli (my favorite inspiration picture), but I'd gathered that it was the most snooty of all the shops I'd scheduled. We were a bit early for the next appointment, so we grabbed diet cokes at Burger King across the parking lot and hung out for about 40 minutes.

Right on time at 4pm we walked into BB Bridal (no website, but great Yelp reviews), and this is where things got really confusing. I met with the owner, Soni, showed her my pictures and described what I was looking for. Now, maybe I should have paid more attention to the reviews, because they did say she had lots of Casablanca dresses (and I'd never really liked the over-beaded style of Casablanca), but she really had a hard time finding something that I liked. Additionally, she had hardly any sample dresses in sizes that would fit my bust. The first dress she put me in I hated, it had so. much. beading. It was everywhere except on the front bottom of the skirt, so it technically fit my description, but was WAY overkill.

Next, she put me in the Casablanca 1875, which was actually a halter top. She tucked the straps in though, and said she could custom alter it into a sweetheart for $100 (price was about $900 with this alteration). I have lots of pictures of me with chicken arms, trying to hold the straps in and the dress up, because of course it wasn't in my size, or even close to it. At least my sister could take some pics with a real camera though, since Soni allows pictures:


I liked that this dress had much more subtle beading than some others that I'd looked at, but I was really struggling with envisioning how it would look in the right size and as a strapless. Even when my mom pulled the dress in to better show the correct shape, I still just wasn't sure.


Confusion had set in, both this dress and the Maggie I liked from the last place were so different from each other, this one being more traditional and soft, the Maggie being more modern. Around that point Soni brought over an ivory Casa Blanca so I could see the difference between that and the diamond white I had on, and there was hardly any difference in the color, and the dress isn't available in a champagne or gold.

And then the pressure started, Soni kept saying how this dress would be one of a kind with the alteration, blah blah blah, but I still just wasn't ready to make a decision. And then after changing back into my own clothes, she kept on with the pressure, and even told me how great it would look if I lost some weight! Gee, thanks! I'm fully aware that I could stand to lose a few pounds, but if you're trying to convince me to buy a dress that I'm already not sure about, don't tell me I'm fat in the sales pitch! Anyway, that was enough of that shop, and I left, fully confused, stressed and torn between all I'd seen today.

Well, the day was coming to a close, with only one more appointment left, but this post is already so long that I think I'll leave the conclusion to this story until next time. You know it ends well, but you'll just have to wait to see how!

Did you get confused between conflicting styles when you were dress shopping?

The Stress Of The Dress, Part 1

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I actually found and bought my dress this past weekend! It was something that I'd stressed about for quite some time, and although the day leading up to finding it was stressful as well, it really was true what they say, I "just knew" when I found the right one.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start back at the beginning, waaayyyy back!

So, I have a confession to make. I actually started looking at wedding dresses about three years ago. Mr. Cola and I'd been together for about 3 1/2 years, and we were constantly getting asked by family and friends when we were going to tie the knot....so I figured, it couldn't hurt to look a little, and get a feel for my preferences so when the time came I'd be ready. Well, the time came a little later than I expected, but the good news was that I still knew exactly what I wanted: a strapless A-line with a sweetheart neckline, in champagne, with beading on the bodice, but not on the front of the skirt, and either a corset back or little fabric covered buttons on the back.

Now fast forward to the time we actually got engaged, and I started looking at wedding dress pictures for real. I still wanted the exact same criteria, but over the past few months had started to get more and more depressed about the dress search. For one, I didn't want to spend very much money on something that I was only going to wear for 5 hours. So watching "Say Yes To The Dress" didn't help on that end, where girls go into the salon with a $1,000 budget and get almost laughed at because their target price is so low. Secondly, after spending hours, and hours, and hours looking at pictures of dresses online, I'd still never found a picture of a dress that really got me excited. That was, until last Thursday.

After making my bridal salon appointments, fitting 6 places into one day because of the constraint of my sister only being in town for 2 days, I gave up on all the wedding websites, and just started looking at Google Images for dresses. Several of the salons had suggested I bring in sample pictures of dresses I liked to the appointments, so I knew I needed to find at least something to illustrate what I was going for. And these are what I found:


{Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5, Source 6, Source 7}

They're all very similar, but none of them really made me excited. I also brought this picture that I'd flagged a few months ago of a $400 dress from a distributor. I figured it would work as a backup if I couldn't find anything else and had to settle on something. I still didn't think this was the one, but it did meet all my criteria and there's only a $29 restocking fee if you return the dress, so I figured it could be worth a try.


{Source}

And the final sample picture I brought was the one I found two days before my appointments, the first picture of a dress I'd seen that actually made me excited. I had been dreading dress shopping, fully expecting I wouldn't find anything right and have to settle, until I saw this picture of a Sophia Tolli dress:


{Source}

This dress had everything I was looking for, but somehow stood out so much more to me than the rest, so I added it to my pile of photos to bring. I was finally excited about shopping!

Now that you've gotten some background and seen what I was looking for, next I'll share my day of appointments with you!

Did you have an exact idea of what type of dress you wanted before you went shopping? And did you expect to not find it and have to just settle on something?

I'm Doing Cartwheels and Backflips!

I just had such a great weekend, as far as wedding-things are considered!

First of all, I had 6 appointments scheduled for dress shopping yesterday, and I bought my dress! My little sister/MOH came to town for the weekend and we went shopping with our mom. I'm going to post more soon about the dress, after I scope the web for more pictures of it and PhotoShop the pictures of me in it to show it closer to the color I ordered it in. I can't wait to share my dress, it's just so perfect, and I'm so freakin' happy about crossing this thing off the list!

Secondly, I think we might have figured out a way to DIY our photobooth! I had already considered, and rejected, the idea of a DIY booth, even before I looked at the pricing for renting one in our area. Unfortunately our nice camera we just bought six months ago doesn't have the remote shutter control as a feature, and I didn't want to have to ask someone to run my camera the whole night on a tripod. But while my sister was here I realized that she has a MacBook Pro, which awesomely has a program called Photo Booth on it! {Source}

I've heard of several other people using this program on their Mac for a DIY photobooth, including Mrs. Bunny recently on WeddingBee. But I think we're going to take it a step further.

To protect my sister's laptop from spilled drinks and such, as well as to make the set up a little less "sit at a computer and click the camera icon with the mouse", we're going to put the laptop under a table, and set up a large LCD monitor with a good quality webcam on top of the table, and utilize this fantastic invention: a button that you can program to act as any key command in any program! This will act as the "start" button that people can press to start the '3-2-1-snap' countdown on the Mac Photo Booth program.
{Source}

Combine all this with some fabric hanging from one of my garment racks, a bench, and some props, we'll have a DIY photobooth for cheap! I actually just ordered the USB Button (and I Googled "Griffin Technology Promo Code" and found a code for 20% off my order, and shipping was free too), so we'll have it for when my sister comes back for Thanksgiving and can test it out. I'll be sure to post pics from the trial, since we'll need to figure out how far away the monitor and webcam can be for the best photos, and that will dictate a lot of the rest of the set up.

I'll also have to make a sign to explain how to use the DIY photo booth (I sort of like this concept, but "Smile. Press. Repeat.", or something like that with cute graphics). Additionally, I'll need to make a page on our website for guests to download the pictures after the wedding (we have 50gb of storage on the site, so it shouldn't be a problem, and all the people who'll be interested in the photobooth are web-savvy).

Yay! I'm so excited we'll get to have cute pictures of us and our guests like these:

{Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4}

So all in all, an awesome weekend! I found my dress, I have a plan for a budget-friendly photobooth option, and best of all, I got to hang out with my sis. She lives in the Portland area, so we don't get to talk in person very often, but we had a blast chatting until 5am last night, telling funny stories, discussing wedding things, and just being girls. I was so exhausted after the long day of dress shopping, I'm not sure how I stayed awake that late but it was a perfect end to a perfect day!

Have you had a stand out weekend where things just seemed to come together, and you were able to cross some big ticket items off your list? And what do you think of our new DIY photobooth plans?