The Fun Part

As you all know, I've been stressed to the max with wedding 'stuff' and trying to figure it all out.  Last Friday Tom's cousins came over for dinner and drinks.  Christopher's fiancé, Courtney, gave me very valuable advice for wedding planning.  She said that at first she was stressed to, but her mom had her make a list of the items that needed to be done and split them into two columns.  The first column is basically tasks that have to be done.  The second column consists of fun things.  During the planning process you get to do one "fun" thing for every "boring" thing.  Of course I decided to reverse it.  So last Saturday I went to Cicada Bridal which was the shop I liked best from my dress shopping experiences.

Tangent:  So I went dress shopping with my bridesmaids, MIL, and a couple other girls.  Every place I called I said, "Hey, I want to spend under $1000 on my dress, so what's the price range for your gowns?  I don't want to waste anyone's time by trying on dresses I don't want to spend the money on."  Every place I called had the same response promising there were TONS of dresses in my price range.  The first place we went to was Cicada Bridal, they make custom gowns on site, but also have a standard line that is less expensive than the custom dresses.  The lady who helped me was awesome and I loved their dress styles.  I tried on a handful of dresses and fell in love with a couple of them.  The second place we went was I-Do Bridal which was the worst dress shopping experience so far.  First it was so crowded we could barely walk.  They didn't have places for the girls to sit, and their dresses were disgusting.  Most of them had stains (which you have to clean after purchasing) and they were all the same style, which was not the look I was going for.  The sales person kept putting me in dresses I didn't want to try on.  I kept saying things like, "I don't like poofy dresses...I don't want it big on the bottom....I don't want jewels at all....no not even a little bit."  Everything looked like a prom dress, they were gross.  Seriously this girl brought me the same dress, different jewels, each time.  Ugh.  After about 20 minutes I said, "I don't think this is going to work out." and got dressed as fast as possible.  The third place was La Belle Elaines.  Ha, I knew when we walked in that I couldn't afford it.  This was the place that the girl said their dresses were $3,000-$8,000, so I told her I was planning to spend under $1,000 and she said, "Oh we have tons of dresses under $1,000 it's totally worth coming in."  Whelp, she lied, kinda.  They had tons of gorgeous dresses that were extremely expensive, they had a cool walkway that was lit underneath so you looked amazing in the dresses.  Then they had this section that was dresses from the last few seasons, used to be display dresses, were dirty from trying on, and were all size 10's.  Needless to say, none of them fit and I had no intention of buying a basically used gown, even with a small budget.

This isn't the dress I chose, but for some reason it's the only picture I was smiling in...and I like posts with pics...so here's one for you!

So I went into Cicada and the lady said, "Marissa I'm so glad you came back in, this material came in last week and it made me think of you!"  She had it pulled before I even got there and of course I fell in love with it.  My dress is going to be raw silk (mmm...best feeling ever....) and it's FUN on the bottom.  It goes along with the casual feeling we are going for and even though it was 3X what I wanted to spend, I love it!  Oh yeah, did I mention it's custom...meaning I will be the FIRST person to  not only wear the dress, but the first person to have this exact material combination, and it's going to be made to fit me and only me!  So that's pretty exciting and it totally has turned me into Bridezilla!

So I'm checking off a fun item from my list!