Wedding dress shopping is probably the most stressful thing that my pending marriage has brought on.
The venue, cake.
The rest, my wedding planner helped.
Wedding dress shopping, that shit is no joke.
Not only is there the stress of finding the perfect dress for the most important outfit you will ever wear there is also the enormous fun question of, who will go with you?
I come from a big family, I also have an great large group of supportive friends, all of this only means one thing… Everyone wants to come. Yet the first thing Say Yes to The Dress teaches you is, DO NOT have a large entourage. People are very opinionated and the more people you take with you the more your voice gets drowned out in the process of dress hunting. So this was my first big challenge, obviously my mom and my sister who is my maid of honor were going to come with me, great choices and the list would stop there right?
Wrong.
My aunts wanted to come, so the two that I’m closest to out of the eight thousand I have were invited. Then there’s my aunts daughters, my cousins, who are both bridesmaids… How do I say no to them? So now were at four people, plus my mom and sister that’s six. Wait now I can’t not have my best friend go with me, seven.
I had to cut it off there. My soon to me mother in law wanted to come and my grandmas and my other aunts but if I didn’t take a stand there would have been 30 people with me.
So Seven was my number, that’s a large entourage but it was the smallest I could do.
Now it’s time to find what store to go to. I live in Miami, there are a lot of stores… This is no easy task. So of course I start googling that the best stores are and how big they are, how many dresses each carries and then finally decided to make two appointments.
11am La Vie En Blanc
2pm Brides Of Florida
Both are very big, very well known stores in the Miami area for wedding dresses. This was going to be a full day event and I was honestly a little afraid. What if I found a dress I loved and they all hated it? Would I still be be able to bring myself to buy a dress that wasn’t loved by all the women who would be sitting in front of me?
La Vie En Blanc is a store that buys unsold or used designer dresses from brides or stores and then resell’s them which means that if you find a dress you like, the size is non negotiable which is the most difficult thing, everything was too big or too small.
Brides of Florida is also by appointment only but they have a wide selection of dresses which makes them a much better target.
Then in the end, all the planning and stressing didn’t matter because nothing went as planned. The first dress I tried on, tears ran down my face and I JUST KNEW.
They say you’ll just know and honestly that isn’t a lie!
I tried on the rest of the ones we had just to be sure because I didn’t want to buy a dress without trying on at least seven more but dress number one never left my mind and we bought it. As stressful as everything for this day felt it all ended up working out how it was supposed to. So great that I bought a dress that I cannot wait to get married in.
My advise for a wedding dress hunt is don’t stress it too much, take the people you know will help you through this and the one’s you can’t invite will just have to understand. Maybe no one will be there and you will find the dress one day randomly walking into a store… who knows.
But I promise when you know, you’ll know.