say 'maybe' to the dress

Since I'm going dress shopping today for the first time ever I have dresses on the brain. What I've been thinking for a while now is that I want short. Not November Rain short, but tea-length. This would both send a message and serve a purpose. The message being, hey, I'm not a princess here, I just want to get married, okay? Not that there is anything wrong with the enormous princess dresses, they certainly have their appeal, but it's not really my style. My style, I am finding, is much more of the "getting married at the courthouse in the 1950's" sort of look. So I'm drooling over short dresses, like this one:





It's available at David's Bridal (which is sort of The Big Supplier for midwestern brides) and I like the overlay. Don't know about the bow.












or this one:
Oh dear lord I love this dress. Do you see the ruffle? DO YOU? You can't really see it but there's sort of a corsetty thing going down in the middle.
This is the dress I was flipping out about being lost. Maybe because I was so sad about losing it that means I'm in love with it? That we are meant to be together and have adorable ruffly lacy babies together?












The problem with short dresses is they are very spring-ish. And I am getting married on Halloween, surrounded by pumpkins and all things autumnal in nature. What's a girl to do?
Buy a really awesome jacket. David's bridal has some satin boleros that are very plain but if I went with the above options they would be super cute. However, if I got a plainer dress I could get this glass hall shrug from anthropologie (look at the back!) and be super adorable.
And the "serve a purpose" part of short dresses is shooooooooes. Shoe porn will follow.

So lets sum up what I say I want in my wedding dress:
Tea length dress
Simple, Informal
Timeless--vintage, not really high fashion
Jacket or sweater
No "princess" effect
No enormous skirts
Opportunity to see the shoes


If that is what I want, why do I keep clicking my links to this dress like a rat in the Olds and Milner experiment?
It is too long to see the shoes, the skirt is enormous, it's so high fashion that I know, I KNOW, I would look back at the picture in five years and kick myself for it and OH YEAH, IT'S PINK!
It's by Alyce and costs two or three times what the others do. Shannon, do not love this dress.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Too late. I've already emailed every dress boutique in a hundred mile radius who might possibly carry it asking if they have it. I just want to try it on. I'm sure it'll look like hell and I'll get over it. But hey, it DOES have a jacket. And it's much more Halloweentastic than the above options. So maybe that's okay?