Wedding, wedding, wedding!

It's been awhile since I updated you on the wedding planning, and since we got a few more big things checked off the list, I decided we were in need of a wedding post!

A few weeks ago, my maid of honor, J, and my mom went bridesmaid dress shopping with me.  Because J is the only in-town attendant I have, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to go to David's Bridal, so that my other girls wouldn't have to worry about finding a shop that carried a certain designer and other complicated issues.  Otherwise, I'll tell you - we wouldn't have been at David's.

When we first got there, it was of course packed because it was a Sunday afternoon.  Our mistake.  We were patient though, and contented ourselves to browse the racks of dresses while we waited for our name to be called for a fitting room.  Mom was trying on a few mother of the bride options too, and so Mom, J and I were all walking around, grabbing dresses in different styles and sizes, so we could have a good selection when we finally got a fitting room.

Cue the David's Bridal employee, who came up to the three of us, and said in her little sorority voice, "Um, actually we have a rule that limits you to trying on three dresses per person."  And then she kind of gave us a blank look as we all stood there, holding our eight-or-so dresses apiece.  Now cue Mom's head beginning to slowly rotate on her shoulders and her eyes narrowing to a squint.  "Well, we are here to buy dresses.  I don't know how we're supposed to buy a dress from you people if you won't let us try them on."  The David's sorority sister employee responded with, "Wellll, it just makes it too hard for us to have to put dresses away if people have more than three."  Mom's head is now almost in full-on exorcist rotation and she's getting louder when she says, "Do I need to give you $20 so you can do your job and let us try on some dresses that we're planning to buy from you?"

So me, Ms. Anti-Confrontation-Cower-in-the-Corner, is trying to shush Mom, people are looking, I'm horrified that attempting to try on dresses has somehow turned into what is quickly becoming a duel situation, and the David's bridal sorority sister finally scuttles away, back to the front.  I think the conversation that ensued up there must have been something like, "There's a crazy lady back there who's going to go postal if she doesn't get a fitting room, and probably they're also going to take every dress we have off the racks and throw them in the floor if they're alone for five more minutes."  Whatever it was, our little temper tantrum had been effective, because we got a new, perkier David's representative, and we got not one, but two fitting rooms.

Poor Mom and J must have tried on fifty dresses, some of them in multiple sizes, some of them multiple times just because I wanted to see them again.  Well, finally we settled on a bridesmaid dress.  We took our dress of choice to the front, waited in line at the register for another 20 minutes, and J tried to order her dress, only to be told, "Who told you this dress came in your color?  It doesn't come in your color."

No worries, I thought, we had had a hard time picking between two dresses anyway, and I quickly offered up the back-up dress.  J once again tried ordering our color and her size and told the cashier that she needed to order it in extra length because J is 5'10" and gorgeous and we don't want her looking like she is getting ready for a flood even without her heels on.  Foiled again.  Cashier lady says, "Oh, didn't you see the catalog?  You have to get one with a plus symbol next to it to be able to have extra length, this one doesn't come in extra length."  Indeed, there are only about five long dresses that they carry that come in extra length.  None of which were dresses we had tried on.  Oh. My. Lord.

So it was back to the fitting room, back to pulling dresses, and thank goodness, the first dress with extra length available that she tried on looked lovely.  It came in the correct color, it's (hopefully) going to fit, and I put all of our options in the computer so everyone can find them.  And here they are!

The upside to having all that extra time waiting around on a fitting room meant that we also got to play around in the shoe section.  J spotted these awesome shoes, and even though I was just going to tell people to wear whatever since we have long dresses, these shoes stole my heart.

You know, classy-stripper-fabulous.  And they're similar enough to my shoes that I think they're going to make for some great photo opportunities.  J swears they're super comfortable, and I figured everyone could use a good pair of hot silver sandals to wear out with jeans or a cute dress.  Mandating bridesmaid things still makes me feel like a bridezilla, and J keeps having to talk me down from going all hippie and telling everyone to wear whatever and just show up.  I love what we picked though, and I can't wait to see how gorgeous everyone's going to look!