Hi friends! Happy Valentine’s week! Hopefully, you are enjoying some sweet treats and headed out to the grocery store to get clearance chocolate, I know I sure am! So for all my brides out there reading this or my future brides, this post is in my humble opinion, one of the most important when it comes to planning. Today is all about buying your wedding dress! Now, this is important for some obvious reasons, but today I want to talk more about expectations than the actual dress itself.

So what do I mean by expectations? Let me illustrate a little…

Bride A grew up watching Disney movies, “Say Yes to the Dress” and has Pinterest boards filled with wedding dresses. She goes into the bridal dress shop and has a very clear idea in her mind as to what she wants because she has seen other brides in her “dream” dress. When asked what kind of dresses she would like to try on, she can recite the exact style, color, and fit she wants. She is brought several dresses in that exact style, goes to try them on, and… PAUSE.

Now, this situation may sound like your ideal dress shopping experience, but one of two things is about to happen to this bride. Best case scenario is that she tries on her dream dress, it flatters her, she feels confident, and she loves the fit.

Unfortunately, there is the worst case scenario that the dress is not meant to be and the brides is devastated and feels hopeless because she has had this decision made in her mind for so long.

 

How do we avoid this expectation we place on ourselves as women when we shop for something as special as our wedding dress? Be open minded.

Now, this does not come easily to me, but I was so inexperienced when it came to dresses, that I honestly did not go into the wedding dress shopping process with a set expectation. I had a few things I could rule out, but other than that, I was open to different styles and different options and I walked in saying to myself, “I want a dress that looks like it was meant for me, not one that I am forcing to work”.

Have you ever heard the expression, “you either wear the clothes or the clothes wear you?” Well this was the main thing I focused on when approaching dress shopping. I didn’t want to wear a dress that was clearly not meant for me, so I was mainly concerned about my gut reaction to how I felt in the dress.

I’ll give you a quick overview of how dress shopping went for me. I walked into one place, with my mom, tried on a few dresses, and realized that store in general was just not going to be the one. No biggie. Then we set up a time at a bigger dress place. I only had a few things I could narrow down for the very sweet girl who was helping me try them on, but after I tried on a few and could explain what I liked and didn’t like, she had another one in the back that she was determined I should try. It was very apparent that this was the dress because I could see it in my mom’s face that it was the one. I tried on a few others after, just to be sure, but none of the other ones gave us that gut feeling.

I have a few other pieces of advice when going about this process:

1. Go early-Make sure you give yourself a good amount of time before your wedding to go dress shopping so you don’t feel rushed and then end up settling on something that you really don’t like.
2. Take people with you who you love, but make sure at least one of them is someone who is honest with you. The last thing you want is for all your friends, sisters, mom, aunts, etc. to think every single dress is perfect!
3. Go with your gut. You need to feel beautiful in it so if you put on a dress that gives you all the feels, then that is likely going to be the one!
4. Don’t get discouraged if it is not a perfect fit right away. Very few of us women are actually these arbitrary size numbers. I was actually four different sizes throughout my dress so they had to order a larger one and then take it in in some places and take it out in others.
5. Bring the size heel you want to wear while trying on the dress. It doesn’t have to be the actual shoes you are going to wear, but if you know you want to wear a 2” heel, then bring some so you can see how the dress will fall.
6. Spanx or no Spanx? This one is rather funny to me because my mom and I went searching high and low for a pair of good compression wear and when I went for my final fitting and wore them and then put on my dress, the dress actually fit tighter than without-so a lot of unnecessary uncomfort went into that and I never have even worn them! My advice would be that if you aren’t used to wearing those, your wedding day is not the day you want to wear them for the first time.
7. The most important- have fun with this process! Enjoy trying on dresses and have a silly and fun time! It is rare that we get to dress up that fancy after our weddings, so enjoy this time!

Oh, and also, a good test for if you love your dress, is if it makes you want to twirl like our sweet bride, Alex. She had so much fun being in her dress and had so much joy as she spun around in it!

Catch up on the rest of the series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3