Bride-to-be Blogger Alyse: Dress Shopping Day: Part One

iStockphoto courtesy of ThinkStock.com.

Spoiler alter: I bought my dress! And although it only took one day and two appointments, the day was so full of excitement and fun details, that it deserves multiple posts.

I never had the desire to “just go” dress shopping, or to pop into places to see what I liked. I fully planned on buying my dress in one day, and decided that really thinking things through before going would give me the greatest chance to accomplish that goal.

I decided a while ago that my dress shopping entourage would only include my mom and my aunt. We set Dress Shopping Day for late September, and I started my research. I compiled pictures of dresses that I liked, and narrowed them down as the weeks got closer. I even showed pictures to Kevin to see what he liked, but after he described the same dress as “terrible” and “the best dress I have ever seen” on two different occasions, his opinion got demoted. The problem was that there was no one dress that I really loved in pictures—I always liked one aspect of the dress, but then disliked another, like the lace, or the back. Regardless, I was still determined to find “the one” as efficiently as possible.

Dress Shopping Day was meticulously organized. I had three appointments, all at different types of places, so that I would get different experiences. I had the big dress-shop store, a department store, and a small boutique. My mom and aunt were set to arrive at 10 a.m., and then we would go to Kleinfeld’s at 11:00 a.m., Saks Bridal at 2:30 p.m. and Mark Ingram at 4:15 p.m. I even made a reservation for a light lunch at 1:00 p.m. near the second appointment so that we could maximize our time.

Turns out that we cancelled the Saks appointment, moved up the Mark Ingram appointment, and completely missed lunch. Despite all the chaos, the three of us were at a bar by 3:30 p.m. with the dress receipt and a Bloody Mary in hand. My organizing didn’t go to waste, though—if I hadn’t had my handy schedule with contact names and numbers in tow, I never would have been able to rearrange the day. Next week, I’ll let you know what happened between the arrival and that much-needed drink.

How did you approach dress shopping? Did you go multiple times or try to do it all in one day like me?

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