How To Find The Perfect Wedding Dress

| All photos are by the amazing Monroe Fox Photography |

Wedding dress shopping.

A time every girl dreams about.

Trying on dresses, feeling like a princess, crying when they've found the one.

Like most things wedding related I was dreading it.

I didn't mind trying dresses on, wasn't really worried about my weight, nor did I care to look like a princess, in fact I wasn't even sure I'd cry like everyone says they do.

I wasn't dreading so much finding a dress but finding one I liked that wasn't a shit ton of money.

I knew the styles I liked because I had pinned a ton. But I also looked at the prices of those pins and knew most were far more than I wanted to spend.

Something I just don't understand is when people spend a mortgage payment, or ten, on a wedding dress! I don't care what anyone says it's INSANE.

If you've been married think about how much you spent on your wedding dress...now think about what trip(s) you could have gone on instead.

Yea, makes you feel real dumb doesn't it.

That's how I feel about that. Travel over clothing, ALWAYS.

Last year I wrote a post here on how I found my wedding dress, the cost, etc. If you follow along on Snapchat (@eastwillowgrove) or on Instagram you've seen a few pictures from the wedding. Today I wanted to share the dress in more detail.

As mentioned I found my dress at David's Bridal, not somewhere I thought I'd find it to be honest. I always thought they had cheeseball dresses so I was pleasantly surprised at the selection and the fact that I loved my dress almost instantly upon trying on.

I went  shopping knowing that the absolute most I was willing to spend was $1000.

MAX.

And that was if I didn't think I could live without the dress. Who the hell thinks they "just can't live without a dress?" I honestly wanted to spend $500 or less. My dress was $500.

Boom.

After I had decided it was the one my mom told me she was going to give me $500 toward a dress regardless so she basically bought my dress for me!

It was perfect.

It had that beachy boho vibe I wanted. There wasn't too much structure as I knew a fitted dress would look out of place in a wedding in Mexico.

But it fit me perfectly and most importantly I felt fucking beautiful in it.

As a mom my body isn't exactly how it was before kids so feeling beautiful is sometimes a challenge.

It had an empire waist so I didn't have to stress about it looking unflattering on my mommy midsection.  I also went braless and my funbags sagbags didn't look half bad! I knew I didn't want strapless when we were looking and I loved that this had a sweetheart shape bust line but it had what they call an illusion tank.

Here is the link for the dress if you want to see it on a 5'9 model but I think I looked pretty damn good in it myself!

I've thought about selling it because like I said, travel over clothing but I decided against it. I'm hoping maybe one day I could pass it on to a niece or daughter-in-law; because we know I'll most likely only have all boys #notmadaboutit #houseofboys I might even be buried in it. Is that morbid of me to think about?

As I've mentioned before, find a dress that makes you feel beautiful. If that is a $50 dress from Zara, wear it! If it's a $10,000 from a shop in London, wear it, but know you could be traveling the world on that kind of money! Your wedding dress is suppose to scream you.

Brides are often so caught up in the wedding chaos that we think we're suppose to do this, to wear that, to think this. It's fucking exhausting!

If you're wedding dress shopping don't dip out on David's Bridal, they might just surprise you!

XX chels

PS. to view any wedding related post you can click on the Wedding section under topics here to the Right. Or you can click here if that is better!