I've been promising to write about my dress...oh, since around the time I became a bee! It's been a tough story for me to tell because it's one that began over two years ago! And because my dress is now one of my absolute favorite wedding details.
You see, I was one of those girls who started scoping out wedding things before I had a ring or an official proposal. Yes, I am guilty as charged. My only excuses are that I was terribly excited and that Mr. Star was a serious enabler -- he brought me home wedding magazines as consolation for very long days spent apart when he was working his internship in the city and I was running around between too many classes and shows! So yeah, my feeling is that it's totally okay to get inspiration and look for beautiful wedding things before you're technically engaged. Especially if you know he's already bought the ring! :)
I was drawn to dresses like these lovelies (all images from The Knot):
After looking at a lot of dresses online and clipping a bunch of pictures out of magazines (I'm talking weeks of endless wedding dress drooling here!), I discovered that I was most drawn to dresses that were the following:
- Heavy on the detail - I love me some sparkle sparkle!
- Dramatic - I'm guessing you all already know this about me.
- Relatively form fitting - I worked really hard in college to get in the best shape of my life and I wanted to show it off! That and the fact that I'm generally petite and didn't want to be swallowed by my dress led me to believe that a mermaid style would be my best bet.
- Had an interesting neckline - Much as I think strapless sweetheart necklines are so very pretty, I wanted something a bit different and unexpected.
Much like my shoe must-haves, having all of this criteria made finding the perfect dress a bit challenging. So I widened my dress search on The Knot to include all silhouettes and necklines.
That's when I clicked that fatal click. The click that brought me to the web page that changed my life. The click that found the dress that I. Had. To. Have.
It was a breathtakingly beautiful Stephen Yearick that had clearly been made to be my wedding dress. I immediately printed it out and hung it on my dorm room wall for all to see. Yes, I was even THAT girl.
The only inkling of doubt tugging at the back of my mind was how many of those little dollar sign symbols were next to it on the site. It's gonna be way too much, I thought. I couldn't stop thinking about it, to the point that it was distracting me from papers to be written and lines to be memorized, so I got up the nerve to pretend to be engaged and called a salon in the city to inquire about the cost. I was so nervous and giggled when the bridal consultant congratulated me on my upcoming wedding -- it felt so dirty to be pretending! When she quoted me the listed price, my heart sank. There's just no way, I thought, that's more than my car is worth. So I gave up on the dress search for a few months and kept that sad little picture in its place of honor in my dorm room.
Did you start looking for dresses before he popped the question? Were you disappointed by your initial finds?
Stay tuned for Parts II, III, and IV! :)
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