Perhaps one of the most exciting portions of wedding planning is the dress.  Let’s face it- no matter what kind of bride you are, you want to look your best- better than you best!  You want his jaw to drop when he sees you and for him to know beyond all doubt that he is marrying a GODDESS!!!  A very reasonable (most of the time), sweet-tempered (again, most of the time), spirited (always), beautiful (Always! *cough*) pint-sized (comparatively speaking) Goddess (This assumes that Goddesses are larger than people…it’s never been proven).  Regardless of your budget, your style, your size or your shape, you want to look GOOD.   Not just “This one is nice.” but “I look GOOD!”  And as this is an important part of the getting married process, you want the quest itself to go well.  There are lots of places you can go and you’ll have a different experience at each one.  My foray into the wedding dress shopping world was brief (it only took one day) but quite diverse!

Wedding Dresses

We ventured out- a merry band of three: The Mother of the Bride (Lucinda), The Matron of Honor (Alexis), and The Bride (me!) on a brisk Monday morning.  A dutiful bride, I had scheduled appointments with a couple bridal salons in Nashville figuring we’d start close to home (I live in Nashville) and work our way toward Franklin if we had no success.  I even came prepared with the appropriate under garments as advised to make it all as easy as possible!

We arrived to our first appointment, coffee in hand, smiles in place, excited to begin and…it was…disappointing.  Upon entering, we were greeted by a petite blond with a chipper smile who did not ask our names, did not ask any questions actually.  She directed us to the wracks of different designers to pull from and left us to it.  A little startled, we complied.  We pulled all sorts of dresses, not really knowing what we were looking for and began to notice that the dresses were rather dingy and had a definite odor.  In the dressing room itself (shivering, I might add as it was a brisk 61 degrees in there) we discovered that it was far worse than we had thought- the insides of the dresses were COATED with various shades of tan and pink- facial imprints of those who had come before- my skin began to crawl before the first dress had been zipped up!  Stalwartly we pressed on- steadfastly NOT looking too closely at the dresses.  The petite blond wandered in and out without warning every few dresses or so (luckily she left the clips and my ladies were quite handy with them!).  Not the most useful assistant.  Needless to say, we did not find a dress there.  I still don’t really know if there were any good dresses there or not- upon reflection, it’s hard to know what the dresses would have looked like if you weren’t constantly distracted by a gray patch here and bad smell there.  It didn’t matter in the end- no way was there going to be a special “I look GOOD!” moment when you’re thinking how nice a bath would be.

After a suitable recovery period, we proceeded to the next appointment.  We went to b Hughes Bridal Formal on Harding Road in Nashville.

b.Hughes Bridal Formal

When we entered, we were greeted by Allison; the store was in disarray as they had just returned from a fashion show, but already, we felt better.  Allison was warm and sweet- she showed us the different designers’ wracks and let us browse a bit, pulling any dresses we were interested in and she set them in the dressing room for us.  The dresses were beautiful!  Some had been mangled by models (Allison had a story for each dress and seemed personally affronted by each injury they had suffered since coming into her care) but all were blessedly clean!  Allison made sure that we had all the major shapes and styles to try out- A-lines, Princess cut, Mermaids, and Ball gowns- there was a representative from each.  My mother helped me into and out of each (some are amazingly heavy!) and Allison set me up on a step in front of some large mirrors as she clipped each dress where they would be if they were my size.  We joked that she needed to order some ugly dresses so that we would have some to say “Definitely no.” to!  She really took the time to talk to me about what I liked and disliked about each dress and then made suggestions for other dresses or alterations that could be made.  The whole experience was relaxed and fun- just the way it should be for every bride!  In the end, the choice was obvious- I actually had one of the moments where you look up into the mirror in a dress and find a big dopey smile and a glowing face.  That was all my mother and sister needed to see to know, we were done!

I know you all want to see the dress that we chose- but Jim knows where this blog is!  I’ll tell you that it is by Romona Keveza, but that is all!!

Wish me luck!