Wedding dress shopping

I thought I would share some of the weekend's wedding dress shopping experiences... no pictures, of course! Matt won't even let me tell him about dresses I'm NOT picking, so I don't want to ruin any surprises for him!

Some store in Arlington Hts by the train station
If anyone has been to a dress shop before, you know they have those raised circle platforms to stand on in front of mirrors to give you a better idea of how the dress looks and the train, etc. You also may know that most are carpeted in the same stuff the floor is carpeted with, which makes them sort of blend in. This proved to be quite a hazard to our group for the weekend! We were walking around the store, looking at dresses and all of a sudden we hear a crash... my aunt Lucy hit the ground... HARD! Fell right over the big platform and was sprawled out on the floor of the store. Luckily, she was ok! The dresses at this store were like $5k, so we decided to move on to the next place.

Marilee Bridal
We didn't have an appt here, but just dropped in and this is the first place I actually tried on some dresses. We didn't have a lot of time to spend here, so I felt like our group was like a tornado going through that place. Dresses in and out of the room, on and off of me, quick votes on whether people liked/disliked the dress. I may be going back there to spend a little more time and look at the dresses some more, because they seemed to have a decent selection. Plus, Erin had some promising choices for her MOH dress there.

Bahama Breeze
This is where we ate lunch... we found it very fitting since Matt and I are getting married in the Bahamas! The food was really good!

David's Bridal (aka The Zoo)
Yes, I went to David's Bridal. On the weekends, this place is packed! I wanted to go there to try on a variety of dresses and get a better idea of what fit me right and what did not. If I go back there, it would have to be during the week or to the new location on Elston, so I don't feel so rushed.

Bridesmart
This is where I think the second incident with those dang platforms happened... my sister had about 8 dresses in her hands and was scooting backwards and wiped out over the platform in the dressing room. It was kind of in slow motion and she fell with all the dresses laying on top of her... I wish I had my camera out at that moment! So funny! : )

Brides by Demetrios
I'm apologizing now if anyone found their dress at this place and loved it. I was not a fan. We went there because they were having a trunk show. I got a free cookie and we got free champagne with a very under ripe strawberry. I met my saleslady and told her I was getting married on a beach and I didn't want anything with too many beads (I had noticed a lot of the dresses there were VERY fancy)... she says she knows exactly what I want and that it is her FAVORITE dress in the store. We walk over and she pulls out this dress that is covered from top to bottom in beads, it must weigh 50 pounds and says "you must try this on". I looked at her like she was from Mars and said "um... maybe a bit less beads". Had she even listened to me?!? Then, she brings me this dress to try on that is well over $2k and I told her I thought it was out of my range and I wasn't going to try it on. Who wants to fall in love with a $2,000+ dress and then try to rationalize the reasons why it is ok to buy the dress and totally break the budget? Not me!

Onto the Sunday appt... House of Brides
We had warned Matt's mom, Ruth, about the dangers of dress shopping (ie, those raised platforms), but wouldn't you know it, the platform strikes again! But, luckily, this time there wasn't quite the wipeout of the last two incidents. She managed to recover before hitting the ground. : ) We worked with Jackie at HOB and she's very nice. She was willing to work with us on dress prices and stay late past closing so we could commiserate on the dress options. I definitely found some favorites there!

Nothing has been bought yet... I'm still searching! Narrowing down the options... slowly! It's much harder than I thought to find the perfect dress. I want something that will work for the beach wedding and not look totally wrong at the NYE reception in Chicago's chilly weather. If I could get 2 dresses, I'd be set, but that's really not in the budget, now is it!