Wedding Dress Shopping: Wedding Talk

Woof. This last week has been a long one. We are t-minus 66 days till the pre-ception and it's getting exciting folks! I will go into detail more about that another day because today we're talking wedding dresses!

Yesterday I went and picked mine up since it came in two weeks early. Because I don't need it till next year they don't have room to store it at the shop until alteration time so I'm going to stash it with me for now. My only fear is Jerek getting antsy (he says he won't),opening it up and taking a peak so I might stash it at his parents or my moms, we'll see.

Wedding dress shopping had been one of the things I've been semi looking forward to. I say semi because I like shopping, however, like most things wedding related I was pretty stressed about it. There are two types of people when shopping for a wedding dress. The ones who justifies spending 5k on a dress and ones that couldn't justify that if she was a millionaire. I'm the latter.

Back in May my sister in law, Amy, asked if I had thought about wedding dresses and if I was excited to start looking. I have no idea what my face looked like at the moment but it probably looked something across the lines sheer terror, a faked smile and a raised eyebrow while I shrugged my shoulders and said "yeah, I guess so..." I straight up asked if she would just do it for me and make some appointments and set everything up, I legit couldn't handle doing it myself. Thankfully she loves this shit and planned the day out and I just showed up for mimosa's before hand!

I looked up a few blog posts on wedding dress shopping and I basically knew I should wear a strapless bra, some comfortable underwear, do my hair and makeup (nothing crazy, but if you don't like the way your face or hair looks that day you most likely won't like any dresses you try on either) have a budget, and most importantly, have a good amount of pictures from Pinterest for dresses you like. Here are some of the ones I showed the ladies that helped me find "the one."

As you can see I like lace, beading, back detail, flowy, boho style dresses. Since we are getting married in Mexico on the beach I wanted something with no structure that incorporated any of these styles. I told the ladies I basically didn't want strapless, nothing with any type of structure and not stark white.

While I follow IIFYM eating and work out regularly, I've been dropping weight and gaining muscle so it wasn't my body imagine I was stressed about; it was that dreaded budget. I had ZERO idea what I planned on spending I just knew I didn't want to spend a ton. When people say "but it's your one special day!" I. DON'T. CARE. I can PROMISE you those two days I wore sports bra's and a hospital nightgown and pushed two babies out of my cooka will be FAR more special than our wedding day. I mean no disrespect to Jerek or any of you reading this but I've mentioned before that Jerek and I have been married for years. Our wedding day will be special, that's a given, but I couldn't justify spending some absurd amount of money on a dress, I just couldn't.

With that being said I went in the low expectations because I knew what I liked (lace, beading, vintage inspired, etc) and figured I'd totally find something I loved but with a hefty price tag. Or the opposite, things in my price range would be crap. I was pleasantly surprised, especially when I found my dress and it was well under my budget/price point that I wanted to spend! 

To make a long story short, we were in between appointments and we needed to stop in at Davids Bridal so I could order my bridesmaids dress for my girlfriends wedding (that I was SUPER late on doing!) While I was trying it on with her the ladies picked out a few dresses for me to try on. I have to admit, I actually had Amy cancel the appointment we had with David's Bridal because I had this skewed image in my head of what types of dresses they offered. I didn't think they would have anything alone the lines I've listed above and didn't want to waste anyone's time going there. 

I was wrong.

Really wrong.

It was probably the fourth dress I tried on and it was gorgeous. It was also brand spanking new, just arrived the day before and no one had tried it on. I felt amazing and you could tell because I didn't want to take it off. With that being said I was scared to look at the price tag but to my surprise it was $500 under my budget and at a price I was extremely comfortable with paying. The biggest surprise was that my mom then whispered in my ear that she was going to buy it for me. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not but Jer and I have been planning our wedding based on what we can afford on our own because we are be paying for everything. I had no idea she was planning on doing this so I was very humbled and gracious that that burden was taken off our shoulders. 

Wedding dresses have come a long way in the last 10 years and many well known stores are now carrying wedding lines; Jcrew and Anthropology are a few of them and at AMAZING prices! Also, remember, you can wear WHATEVER YOU WANT on that day! I know many people that wore floral, pink, black, etc. YOU DO YOU BOO! I toyed with the idea of doing a floral or a color but fell in love with my dress in ivory so I stuck with that. It will most likely take everything in me to not put it on and post a picture on Instgram because I love it so much but since I won't be showing you until the day of, I will tell you that one of them above is VERY close to what I bought!!! 

Happy Hump Day!