The Most Expensive Article of Clothing I'll Ever Buy

Of course, I'm talking about my wedding dress. :-) I figured that since I've been talking about what the kids are going to wear & I've already mentioned what K is going to wear, I should round things out & post about my dress. I'm not going to post any pictures, or give any hints, because K wants it to be a complete surprise. I thought it might be interesting, though, to talk about my experience shopping for the dress.

Over Labor Day, I went to St. Louis to go dress shopping. Both my Mom & Maid of Honor (MOH) R live in St. Louis, so it seemed like a natural choice. This is really the only piece of planning I'll be doing out of state, so it was an interesting experience. I can't imagine how hard it would be to plan an entire wedding from out of state. The benefit (that I didn't even think of ahead of time) is that since they'll be shipping it to me here in Seattle, I don't have to pay sales tax! Yay!

Figuring out where we were going to go shopping was a lot more complicated than I expected. I'm didn't even realize how much living in Seattle has changed the way I shop; here everything I look for has a lot of information on the internet. We've used the internet to find vendors, find reviews of those vendors & ordered the raw materials for our invitations online so far & I expect we'll do more, including ordering our favors online.

So, when I was looking for dress shops, I sat down to do the same thing. I'd already added some pressure to the situation because we only had Labor Day weekend to go shopping and I didn't want to drive all over the St. Louis metro area. Unfortunately, I was really surprised when I sat down to start looking. Most bridal shops didn't even have websites. The places that had websites weren't always very good or useful. Plus, there were almost no reviews at any of my usual haunts! Everything came up blank. I even looked for a site specific to St. Louis brides & there was very little information.

Desperate, I started Googling the shops that I was looking at.

Which is how I found all of the hidden reviews. They're all at Citysearch! I never, in a million years, would have guessed that Citysearch was the site to go to. Well, it turns out, for St. Louis it is. After all of the searching, I found three places for us to go visit:

Karen's Wedding Boutique - This place was in a strip mall that I've driven past about a million times between where my Mom lives & where my Dad used to live. None of us had any idea it was there!

The store is about a medium size. It's run by a lady & her mother; when we were there (a Saturday morning) it was only the two of them plus the seamstress working. They were really busy. In this store, you walk around & pick out dresses that appeal to you. Then, once you have a good stack (I think I had 10 back there), you go back into the dressing room & try on the dresses. If you like the dress at all, you come out to show your audience.

This was a really interesting way to shop as my first stop. Since I hadn't tried on dresses at all, I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. Plus, I knew I didn't want a poofy dress, but they're all so big it's hard to tell what's going to be poofy & what isn't. They also had me put a petticoat on; this went directly against my "no poofy dresses" desire. I thought I'd give it a try, though, before I vetoed it completely. After a few dresses I asked the lady I was working with about going without the petticoat and she said that you need it to hold the dress out so that it looks right. Without any prior knowledge, I assumed she was correct & went with it.

In the end, I found a few dresses that I liked at Karen's, but nothing that I loved. So, we went on to the next stop, Town & Country Bride.

This was definitely the nicest place we went to; when I called to make the appointment, they asked me my price range. Once I told them, they said I was going to the right store. Their other store had dresses from $3K and up. Wow! Talk about out of my price range (especially for St. Louis prices).

Interestingly, when MOH R and I walked into the store, we almost walked out. I think all of the consultants were coming off of lunch (our appointment was at 1), but we didn't get any help at all for a good 5 or 10 minutes. In that time, we saw another bride & her mom walk in and get helped immediately. I was seriously unimpressed.

Luckily, MOH R took charge & got us the attention we deserved. They apologized & I got to meet my consultant. She was wonderful, so helpful & listened really well. When I told her I wanted something plain, she started out with really plain & then gradually changed things up when I wasn't feeling the dresses at all.

This was a completely different experience than Karen's. Not only was the consultant pulling the dresses for me, but the entire set up was a lot nicer and more relaxed. Another difference was my reaction to the dresses, though. At Karen's there were a lot I liked somewhat, but nothing I loved. At Town & Country, there were several dresses that I just wasn't interested in at all. They didn't feel like me.

Then, my consultant walked in with a dress. I immediately melted; I remember gasping "Oh, that's beautiful". I tried it on & as soon as it was on, I knew that was the dress. As stereotypical & dorky as it sounds, I just knew it. I didn't want to take it off at all (a pretty good sign that I liked it, don't you think?). It was lovely.

Once we'd found that dress, I was pretty much done shopping. My consultant recommended that I go to the other place I'd planned on going to just to be sure.

So, we ended the day at Robin's Bridal Mart. They didn't take appointments; the combination of that & the name "Bridal Mart" should have clued me in that it wasn't the nicest place in the world. It really wasn't, it was kind of sketchy. It was another place where you pick the dresses off the racks & then try on a bunch. I think if you knew exactly what you were looking for, you might be able to find a good deal there.

In my case, though, I just put some random dresses on & thought "nah, I like the other one better" every single time.

So, on Tuesday, before my flight back, Mom & I went back to Town & Country to purchase the dress. I tried it on again; Mom took some pictures (that I drool over when K's not around). And I bought it!

What do you think? Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of clothing so much that you didn't want to take it off?