for the casual wedding

My obsession with vintage weddings has sent me doing all sorts of crazy searches. I found the vintage hair archives and I thought, oh look! A wedding section! But maybe this is a little TOO advintageous (ha! New word!) and a little too quirky, even for our weird loving selves.

a big "no" and an "i guess not"

Greg, Ashley and I drove all the way out to 144th and F to check out the sale at Suburban Bridal.
(I know! I took the groom with me! For shame!) It was a very long drive, and when we walked in there's a big desk right in the middle with four ladies sitting at it. And they just stared at us when we walked in, which made me very nervous since I have never stepped foot into a bridal salon in my life. I finally said I heard about their sale and wanted to try on some gowns. And they said, get this, what sale?
On your website, I said.
And the woman who was clearly in charge said, oh, I'll have to check the website then. And sent us off to look at the racks of dresses by ourselves until she could figure it out.
You don't know when your own sale is? Insanity!
The service wasn't stellar, but I might go back because they weren't really expensive and I don't really require assistance when Greg and Ashley are on the hunt. Also, despite my college appearance, they didn't stop me from trying on dresses. Here I am trying on my first ever wedding dress:

It was...pretty. I liked the bust detailing, and the straps that were all beaded (although you can't see either of those things here) and I LOVED the price--$99, suckas. But I didn't love the dress. I put it on again when I was done because, come on, it's $99! That's less than I spend most grocery trips. It looked nice and it made me look pretty, but I just didn't think it was the kind of dress I would wear. But, but, $99! Then I figured, if I had to consider whether or not I wanted it, it wasn't the dress for me.
Remind me of this moment when I'm desperately over budget and crying because the dress I want is too expensive.
Then, when I realized none of their dresses were for me, and NONE of them were short (dang) I decided to get a little silly. Since the beloved Alyce dress has a huge puffy skirt, I decided to try on a dress with a huge puffy skirt. Heavy emphasis on the puffy. And the huge.
We couldn't even capture the entire thing in one frame of film! Definitely not the dress for me.
Don't feel bad for the dress, though. It doesn't need me. When I took it off, it stood on its own. Spooky.
I also tried on a straight skirted dress with a lace overlay and a little dragonfly detailing. Made me look like a box. Not even worth a picture. But it made me a little misty over a dress I found when I was doing a high school research project, before I even HAD a boyfriend, of course. It was a Michelle Roth with cap sleeves, pearl buttons, and a diamond dragonfly, that was the first dress to which I ever said "I want that to be in my wedding." And funnily enough I didn't really think about what I wanted to wear in my own wedding again until now. What kind of girl am I, anyway? Well, turns out, the kind of girl who leaves her skirt and leggings on underneath wedding gowns. Class-ay.

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?