To no great surprise to anyone who knows me, a wedding dress now officially tops my list of clothing items I hate shopping for, handily beating out swimsuits and bras. But success was finally had!
To start with, I had absolutely no idea what style of dress looks good on me. So first I tried visiting places where I thought I could try on a variety of dresses:
David’s Bridal – needs no introduction, better for quantity than quality
House of Brides – Think higher end David’s Bridal
Eva’s Bridal – somewhere between David’s and House, with a bit less selection
Doris Bridal – a boutique where the saleswomen do a great job of figuring this question out for you, and the prices are correspondingly a bit higher (though still quite reasonable for a boutique, I think).
After these trips, I learned which dresses looked good on me (which turned out to be only vaguely related to which dresses looked good on the hanger – seriously, just try on everything in sight in the beginning). I also did not find an actual dress that I both liked, and was in my budget. Everything was clearly proceeding according to plan.
A friend then introduced me to the world of department store wedding sections. If your tastes run a bit simpler than “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” or “Say Yes to the Dress”, this is an avenue worth exploring. Here are just some of the clothing stores which have a wedding section, with dress choices for both brides and bridesmaids:
Ann Taylor
JCrew
Nordstrom
Bloomingdale’s
I actually ended up finding my bridesmaids their dresses at JCrew, which makes for easy returns and exchanges to makes sure the right size is found (if your bridesmaids are not scared off by a no-exchanges policy, Aria Dress has some great looking options). But still no dress for me.
I finally appealed to Chrissy, and she sent me to a miraculous place: a boutique with extremely reasonable prices, selling gorgeous, simple, well-constructed dresses: Nicole Miller! Which is where I finally found a dress to my liking.
I would like to end this post by noting that you could find worse ways to spend an afternoon than visiting a Bridal Expo (the link is to the Chicago area one, but I have no doubt these things are everywhere). Either, like me, you will find the whole thing ridiculously entertaining and hilarious, or you may actually find some useful vendors or ideas for your wedding 🙂