Finding "The Dress"

I am not a "girly girl". I own exactly two dresses, and I usually wear jeans or jean shorts and a t-shirt or sweatshirt. And my t-shirts are all large (even though I am not a very large person). I absolutely refuse to wear skirts (hate them) or any low-cut tops (feel extremely uncomfortable in them and am constantly trying to pull them up, even when they're not supposed to go up any farther). My mom loves to tell the story that, for my Bat Mitzvah, she dragged me to literally EVERY store in the DC metro area (yes, we went all the way down to Tysons Corner, haha) looking for a dress I would wear and found...nothing. Finally, my aunt Lyz, who lives in NY, called my mom and said she found a dress that she thought I would like, and she would mail it down to us, and if I didn't like it, we could just mail it back. Well, that was the dress I ended up wearing! It was a dark red, crushed velvet, long sleeve, mid-calf-length dress (my Bat Mitzvah was in late December), very plain, and a "regular" (by which I mean like a t-shirt) neckline. I loved it!

So I knew that I should start wedding dress shopping early, because who knows how long it would take me to find something I actually liked! I started by browsing online, looking at known designers' websites (Alfred Angelo, David's Bridal, etc.). Pretty much everything I saw was either strapless (which I absolutely refuse to do, I would feel like it was falling down the whole time!) or very low-cut. I knew there HAD to be dresses out there that were made for people like me, who don't wear stuff like that, so I kept looking. I ended up browsing on The Knot, where I found one dress that looked promising. I clicked on the link to the designer's website, and discovered that it was a whole line of what they called "modest" dresses! They had a link on the website where you could find stores in your area that carry the line, so I did that. However, when I started going to the websites for the stores, I discovered that almost all of them had either closed or the website didn't exist! The only one that was still open was a place called The Yellow Rose. I looked through their website and liked what I saw, so I emailed Julia, the owner, to set up an appointment to go try on dresses.

I posted a facebook status asking who wanted to go dress shopping with me, and got a lot of responses initially. My sister even wanted to fly down from NY to go! (I talked her out of it though.) But gradually as the day got closer, people dropped out, and it ended up being just me and Shosh who went.

I wasn't sure what to expect. We went on a Saturday afternoon, and I was worried that it would be really busy, having read horror stories on The Knot from people who'd gone to David's Bridal and the like on weekends. But as it turned out, we were the only people there! It was just me, Shosh, and the owner (it's a VERY small shop). I tried on a total of 9 dresses, although only 8 of them made it out of the dressing room (one made me look pregnant, and I said NO WAY!). The fact that this store had 9 dresses (and I'm sure they had more than that even) that I was even willing to try on made me feel like I had made a good choice in looking there! Anyway, the last dress I tried on, I liked immediately. I thought it was a little too "poofy" in the skirt, but Shosh said they can take out some of the crinkly stuff that makes it poofy (I forget the name of it, haha). I ended up wearing the dress for about 20 minutes! I even walked over by the door so we could see what it looked like in natural light (since our wedding ceremony will be outside, weather permitting, I wanted to make sure I wasn't totally washed out, since it's a white dress).

I ended up texting a picture of me in the dress to my sister and my mom (well, actually to my dad so he could show it to my mom, my mom doesn't even know how to check her voicemail on her cell phone, let alone text!) and asked my mom what she thought, since she was paying for the dress. She said (typical buzzkill that she is) that she thought I should sleep on it before making a decision, and didn't I want to shop around more? I said HELL NO! I HATE shopping, especially the kind where I have to try stuff on, so if I found something on the first trip, WHY would I want to subject myself to MORE? She still wasn't convinced. Julia, the shop owner, said that she would give me the dress for $599, even though the list price was $668. My mom asked how long that offer was good :-P Julia said through Monday, so I told my mom I would sleep on it and we told Julia we would decide by Monday.

Of course, after I slept on it, I still wanted the dress! So my mom called Julia and paid for the dress over the phone, and I went and picked it up that Wednesday after work. It's now hanging in my closet until it comes time to go get it fitted! Julia also gave me the business card of a seamstress she works with often, who apparently used to work for David's Bridal, so she knows her way around wedding dresses.

My sister was PISSED that she didn't get to be there for the moment when I knew it was "The Dress". She made me promise that I would give her her own private dress-modeling session at some point, so I agreed to that. She did say that it looked good on me in the pictures, though!

The dress is a scoop neckline ball gown with silver and white beading on the neckline and waistline of the bodice and at the bottom of the train. It has "petal" sleeves, which are basically like cap sleeves. This is me in the dress:

Isn't it pretty??? :-)