Shopping for The Dress
What a fabulous thing to shop for, but it's not always a smooth process. I personally tried on about 30 dresses, with mixed results! I loved my wedding dress, I adored the vintage jewelled belt. It was covered in sequins so it shimmered every time I moved. It made me feel like a princess, but I did find the shopping for it a tad stressful. I thought that it would be the most magical process. It was not, but I did find a magical dress.
I imagined browsing beautiful dresses with a glass of champagne in hand, with my nearest and dearest girls. I hope that is the experience that you have. Although I loved trying some beautiful dresses on, I didn't love the experience as much as I thought I would, and that's ok. I thought it would be really joyful, it was more frustrating than anything. It seemed to be a numbers game, the more you try on the more likely you will be of finding 'The One'. It makes sense that there will be more dresses that don't work on the journey to finding the one that does, but I did start to lose the joy halfway through!
I am not a particularly body positive person, so when trying on dresses, I wanted the privacy of a dressing room and always tried to try dresses on that would compliment my shape. Some of the bridal shops I visited didn't have dressing rooms, and weren't set up for browsing. My shape and size seemed to be the most important factor for the bridal boutique staff, rather than what I liked. I was a size 10, but felt like a giant after visiting some shops. There were comments like 'none of these will suit your shape', or 'this is the style of dress you should go for with your figure'.
Skip to walking into a tiny bridal shop where the dresses were fighting for space. The shop owner pulled out all these floral lace dresses for me to try on, which 'suited my shape'. I am definitely not a floral lace girl! I saw this dress glistening in-between the pouffy skirts. When I freed it from the organza prison it was trapped in, I gasped. It was covered in sparkles with a layer of tulle. Simple shape but a real show stopper with a vintage style crystal belt. I wanted to wear it straight away. I tried it on and the rest they say, is history.
I loved my dress but I wasn't overly in love with the process of finding it. It was fabulous to wear on the day and I certainly look back at our photographs with joy, so does it matter that the journey to get there wasn't quite what I expected?
