Picking Out My Wedding Dress -- Part 2

In Part 1 of my dress-shopping saga, I learned about the styles I didn't like. To recap: no pickups, no tulle, no full skirted gowns, not too much embellishment. It was time to start figuring out what I did like. I was thinking something simple and classy, perhaps in an ivory or something with a splash of color. Had I picked our vintage theme before wedding shopping, I'm sure my dress would have been much different.*

Dresses I liked:


Okay, to be honest, I didn't really love this dress, but it was one of the only tea-length dresses I could find on the David's Bridal website. Since, at the time, my fiance and I were strongly considering a beach weding (and by strongly, I mean 90% of sites we researched would involve at least a beach ceremony . . . and possibly a beach reception, too), a shorter dress seemed like a necessity. I was pretty disappointed with DB's tea-length dress selections, though. So this was option 1.


This dress, option #2, was one of my favorites. It looks even better when you click on the actual dress link and zoom in to see the details. I loved that from far away it looked so simple, but up close there was some embellishment. Plus, I loved the
burnout** style (I have clothes in my closet like this). Unfortunately, I knew almost immediately that my fiance wasn't going to be crazy about this dress. He had made it pretty clear that he really wanted me to wear something that looked like a wedding dress and not just "some white dress."

Here was option #3. You can see that I really was going for the simple look. The picture shows it in pure white, but according to the dress details, it's also offered in ivory.

I wasn't crazy about this one, but I saved it to my favorites anyway. It doesn't hurt to keep your options open, right? I hated the bow on the front, but liked the rest of the dress. There was embellishment on the bodice only which I thought would be a fair compromise between the completely simple look I wanted and the whole "looking like a wedding dress" that my fiance wanted. I also started realizing that I really love the strapless look. My only concern was that the dress would fall down since I've had similar problems with other strapless dresses and tube tops I own. This bride is, shall we say, teeny-tiny in practically every way? No boobs to hold the dress up . . .

On to option #5. Again, a strapless dress. I loved the two-tone of this dress! And it wasn't too white...I loved the champagne color and the cut of the dress. It was, overall, very simple but also elegant and different. I kept going back to this one during my online dress search and decided that it was my favorite of the ones I'd seen.

Option #6 was probably my second favorite! I loved the sash in the front that goes all the way to the floor in the back. I wasn't crazy about the red, but it turns out you can make the sash any color you want. I was envisioning champagne or pewter grey. I'm usually not crazy about halters because I don't think I was blessed enough up top to pull it off. But, I still loved the dress. You can see that I was also falling in love with the split-front/cut-out style.

This one was kind of similar to option #3, above. I loved the bodice of the dress and liked that it had some embellishment on the top, but was very simple on the bottom. I thought it would show off my figure nicely, too. And, like many of the dresses I liked, it was strapless. Nothing in particular stood out to me for option #7, but I liked it all the same.

Finally, we have option #8. You can't see it from this picture, but there is no train on this dress which really appealed to me. It was a very simple, strapless dress that had kind of an asymetrical skirt. It's hard for me to really explain with my limited fashion knowledge, but if you click here you'll see what I mean. My only concern with this dress was that, although I loved its simplicity, my fiance (and mom, for that matter) would think it was too plain for a wedding dress.

When I went to DB, I tried on a lot of the above dresses, but not all. I also ended up trying on some that were on my "no" list (mainly because the consultant brought them over and I didn't want to be rude/hurt her feelings...yes, I'm slightly neurotic when it comes to pleasing people). And I found some others in the store that were very pretty...ones that I either did not see while browsing online or just looked a lot better in person. But we'll save that for Part 3.

Any guesses as to which dress I ended up choosing? Is it one of the ones above? One of the dresses on the "no" list from Part 1? Something completely different? Of course, you know that (at least in my opinion) my dress kind of (but not totally) fits in with a semi-vintage themed wedding...do any of these dresses have that feel to you? Stay tuned to find out!

*I do think that my dress still kind of fits into a vintage-y feel, but I've seen so many other dresses since picking our theme that I love. I still love the dress I ended up picked, though, so I'm not too disappointed that we didn't pick the vintage thing sooner.

**See, I was still expanding my fashion terminology knowledge!