...And you can totally shorten the dress and turn it into a cocktail dress!

When I first asked one of my dear friends to be a bridesmaid, she happily agreed. She excitedly asked me about a few details of the wedding then asked, "Have you seen the movie 27 Dresses? If you haven't, go watch it and remember that your bridesmaids are supposed to be your friends."

Keeping in mind that I want my bridesmaids to be happy with what they were wearing, especially since they are shelling out their own money to pay for these dresses, I tried to keep them full updated. I also wanted them to have a say in every aspect of the wedding that was going to affect them -- the dresses being one of these major points.

I thought it was going to be difficult because my four bridesmaids are so completely different from each other in skin color, hair color, taste and style. I figured that the dress style wouldn't be an issue because I was going to pick a color and let them pick their own dresses. I was, however, concerned about the color. Originally, I planned to pick one color and fabric and let each bridesmaid pick whatever style they wanted (with my approval, of course!). But then, when I went into David's Bridal to look for wedding dresses, I saw a manequin using two colors for the bridesmaid dress and fell in love. It's called Dress Up Your Dress

Source: David's Bridal

The dress in the shop was a beautiful chocolate color with pink accents and really caught my eye even though I wasn't interested in those colors! I ended up buying some fabric swatches in the colors that I liked, took pictures of them (because the colors online and in the catalog look tons different than in person!) and e-mailed them to my bridesmaid and told them all to pick a color (or two) and I would go with the majority.

Turns out there were 3 votes for pewter and 3 for serene (I have four bridesmaids) which made my decision super easy. Luckily for me, it was my favorite color combination too! While I waited for my bridesmaids to e-mail me back with their choices, I was secretly wishing for either serene with capri or serene with pewter. I didn't want to influence their choices at all so I kept silent until they each got back to me. When my last bridesmaid called to tell me her favorites (she liked serene with capri and serene with champagne then said, "I guess I just really liked serene,") I seriously squealed with delight. "That was my favorite too!" I replied, happily.

I wanted either all four of my bridesmaids to have the same color dress with the other color as the accent or have 2 girls wear serene dresses with pewter accents and 2 do the opposite. I was afraid that 3 and 1 might look a little weird (especially since I'm not having a maid of honor) and again lucked out -- 2 wanted serene as the main color of the dress and 2 wanted pewter.

I absolutely love how you can personalize these dresses by picking either a cuff, sash or peek-a-book skirt (or a combination of these accents)! (The serene color is much closer to a teal and darker in person.) I sincerely hope that my bridesmaids really can wear these again...