This is NOT The Dress

During the Christmas holidays, my daughter was in town. Her and her boyfriend were talking seriously about getting married. They have known each other since they were 11 and 12, and dating since there were about 17. He had just gotten back from serving a two year mission in Chili (August 2010), and they picked the romance up where they had left it back in August of 2008.

Since she has been attending BYU, and was working on graduating this summer, we knew that over the holidays would be the only time bride and mother of the bride would be able to go wedding dress shopping. Something I probably looked for forward to more than she did. That is until she started trying things on...

Since we were going to be doing a budget/DIY wedding, the first idea for a wedding dress was to just wear mine. Bill and I got married 4 May of 1983, so the styles have changed A LOT! At the time, my dress was very pretty. I wanted something simple and not "poofy." Ashley pretty much wanted the same, but with lots of lace. Mine had lots of lace. We weren't really sure mine would even fit, as it was a size 5 taken in. Ashley is a size 2 (in today's wedding dresses).

It fit her just right. Boy, did that ever depress me. I couldn't even get my little toe in it today. My body has really gone to pot. But anyway, let's just get over that for now.

When Ashley put it on, I could tell, even though it had all the lace, was not poofy, and pretty simple, it was just not her. I was fine with that. I am really glad that she gave it a chance, but I want her to be happy with what she wears. A bride needs to feel beautiful, and I think she just felt cute. I understand fully, as I had the same problem when I went out to find my perfect dress. Since I was so small, and young looking (even though I was 23) everyone wanted to put me in something "cute." I finally told one lady, "for once in my life I wanted to look like my age!" None of those Southern Bell hoop skirts for me!

So now that we knew this was not the dress for Ashley, we had to figure out what was the dress for her. It had to have a lot of lace, and some sort of sleeve so that she could wear it to the temple. It also had to be within budget. The bottom price, including alterations, etc needed to be about $300-500. GOOD LUCK with that one, right?

Well, we went to the three bridal places here in Monroe, and wound up visiting one of them three times. She thought maybe she wanted a short dress, but she tried on all types. There were only two short dresses in the store, and she really liked one of them, but we weren't too sure if the men would, especially her man. So we took pictures of the dresses she tried on, and showed them to her three brothers and dad. We were right, they did not like the dress. At least not as a wedding dress. It was more like a business dress, rather than a wedding dress. So then we went back to the bridal shop, and decided to re-try on the other short dress. But, when we got there, it was no where to be found. It needed no alterations, it fit perfectly, but it was not on the size two rack where it was suppose to be. My mom, Ashley, the ladies in the shop and I looked through all the sizes thinking maybe it was misplaced. As I got to the size 6 area, I found a dress that I thought she would like. I showed to her, and she kinda nixed it, but I made her try it on.

As she was in the fitting room putting the dress on, someone found the dress we had been looking for, but when Ashley came out of the fitting room, she was beaming. It was THE dress. Only problem was it was huge on her, as she needed a size 2. So the store manger got online to check if they could get it in a 2, but had no luck. They were discontinuing this dress, and the only two dresses anywhere to be found were there in that shop and they were a size 6 and 8. The alterations lady said, no problem, we can size it down. So, now Ashley had her dream wedding dress, and because it was discontinued, it was on sale. Funny thing about this dress, is that no one in the store had ever seen this dress before.

So now that she had her dress, we went ahead and did a little more shopping. She wanted yellow shoes, and found a pair of shoes she loved that could be dyed the yellow she wanted. She found a pretty tiara that was also marked down. She got her dress, shoes, jacket, the undergarments, and tiara all within budget!

WOOOHOOO! Hope everything else falls into place. Actually it will, so far everything has...