Mishaps and other haps

This morning Liz, Alice and I met Althea and little Sylvie over at David’s Bridal for my first dress appointment of the day.  We were fueled by cinnamon rolls and doughnuts from Lane’s and I had consumed a couple of cups of coffee, so we were ready to shop for a wedding gown in earnest!

Just for the sake of comparison, each shop that I have visited so far has its own guidelines and procedures for getting brides in and out of wedding dresses.  Last week, Moments to Cherish allowed us to browse the entire store and pull dresses we liked, then try them on.

David’s had me fill out a form, then select a pair of shoes.  I had browsed their inventory online before the appointment and gave the sales associate the numbers of items I liked.  We added other dresses to this list as desired, since the stock was available for browsing.  I was assigned dressing room #30 in a large, mirrored dressing room area, which indicates how busy the place can get on a Saturday morning.  My sales associate was able to give me a lot of attention for an hour or so, then her second client arrived and she split time between the two of us.

After we narrowed down the choices at David’s, Althea, Liz, Sylvie and I headed over to Vera’s House of Bridals just in time for my second appointment of the day.

Vera’s atmosphere was a little more formal.  The dressing rooms were larger and fewer in number.  They were cushier and had enough seating for several people.  The associate there pulled dresses herself and mostly picked out things based on my reactions and comments and her own experience fitting women of various body types into dresses.  We had the opportunity to do a small amount of browsing, but were not encouraged to wander freely through the inventory.

Here, also, I found a couple of dresses that stood out above the rest.  Funny, that.

Wow, I am not sure how to make the decision about this.  I feel like I need to revisit my top choices.  Any ideas about a ranking system?  There are some great options, but nothing I have seen yet has grabbed me by the throat and made me renounce all other wedding dresses.

The staff did allow us to take photos at both David’s and Vera’s.  Much thanks to Alice and Althea for being the photographers of the day!  Hopefully I can soon work out the technical kinks I had this afternoon so that I can share photos of the top contenders with out-of-town family and friends.  I uploaded over 100 photos to my computer, but was having problems trying to send them as attachments or uploading them to a private Picasa album.

Miss Sylvie had a lot of fun playing with the mirrors in the dressing areas and she loved crawling over to and feeling the soft satin of the dress trains.  She was very well-behaved and amused throughout the experience.

I didn’t realize how much of a day it had been until I was in the middle of fiddling with email and computer issues, getting frustrated with that, and started wondering how I was going to figure out which dress was “best” over all!  Any thoughts?

I bought my first bridal magazine last night.  Maretta had handed me a bunch a while back, so I hadn’t picked up any of the current ones out.

I decided to buy a copy of the November/December Brides because it contains some useful information on officiants, save-the-dates, receptions, and a fairly simple planning calendar.  I know that the planning calendar in this magazine is “fairly simple” because I have been browsing wedding planners and books a little the past few months.  A checklist of things to do can be AN ENTIRE BOOK.  No wonder so many brides stress out and go on shooting rampages in the last weeks before their weddings!

Also, there were beautiful dresses in the magazine– I am optimistic that the new trends for 2009 are mostly pretty and flattering.  As I have started shopping for my dress, I have seen more and more things that I like!

However, bridal magazines are a strange combination of helpful advice, pretty merchandise, and inane astrology, minus the stars.  In fact, replace stars with lipstick shapes.  Yes, the SHAPE of the LIPSTICK TUBES in your HANDBAG say much about your personality and the types of traits you will contribute to your marriage.  All of these are great traits, no matter what shape your lipsticks are, but beware not having a lipstick tube in your purse!  No telling what will come of that, as Brides does not tell me (see p. 100).

Also, “pink is the new white”– yes, remember, Brides said it first.  Women all over the country are apparently donating to the cause of breast cancer research by purchasing a line of pink wedding dresses.  Enter Lisa with the heresy: I guess this is fine if you really want a pink or pink-trimmed wedding dress, but how about just donating money directly to breast cancer research?  Do we really need to tie all of this merchandise to various medical research causes?  What percentage of the dress purchase is actually going toward research?  Do you really want a pink wedding dress at a Fall wedding?

I don’t know.  I wonder about women and the people who write for them when I look at some of these articles!