WARNING: LONG POST
So I went into David's Bridal a month after I got engaged to get an early idea of what I wanted for a dress. My mom had been gracious enough to state she would pay for it, so I was a little anxious about price, but she insisted that we do DB, since the other boutiques we had dropped in hadn't had any options I fell in love with.
I tried on a lot of dresses. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. And this was after having gone to other places and trying on dresses there. I could tell my mom was getting antsy about all the waiting around.
I was wearing one of the dresses that I hadn't hated so far, and the lady helping us suggested that I try on a veil, because that might help me visualize the wedding. She grabbed a beautiful, medium-length veil and pretty much as soon as it was fit in my hair, I was COMPLETELY in love with it. I couldn't believe how much I loved the veil.
Unfortunately, my mom took this as a sign that I had fallen in love with the DRESS. She kept saying that she thought "this was the one!" I could tell she was completely fed up with the experience, and I didn't hate the dress, so I "said yes to the dress" and rang the bell and BAM, I had my dress already.
It took a total of 10 minutes for a stone to settle in my stomach. Before we had finished at the counter, I knew in my gut that I wasn't happy with the dress that I got. I went home to my FH and ended up crying, realizing that the one wedding dress I would ever wear wasn't the wedding dress I had always pictured in my dreams.
When I went alone to pick it up in November, I didn't ask to try it on because I was so unhappy that I didn't want to look at it and remember. Fast forward to last weekend: we were trying to figure out if my mom had any jewelry that would work with the dress as my something borrowed, so we got it out of the closet for the first time since I'd picked it up and I put it on.
But it wouldn't zip.
Turns out, they had SOMEHOW given me a dress 2 sizes smaller than the size that we had asked for. I've lost weight and am at my ideal (thank goodness), and I know for a fact that I have never been that size in my life, so it was definitely someone's accident..
Last Tuesday, we were able to take it in to DB, and they were super gracious about the whole thing and offered to exchange it for the same dress, but in the right size. But I realized this was my chance to get a dress that I actually loved, so I put my foot down and said I wanted something different, and I ended up finding the dress that I loved!
For anyone who actually made it to the end of this post, and is still in the wedding dress shopping stage, I learned two lessons to pass on:
1) I don't care HOW much pressure you're experiencing, don't let anyone else decide what dress you're going to wear (unless, of course, someone else is paying and you're trying to make them pay for a dress way out of their price zone). If you let yourself get pressured into settling, you will be so upset at yourself. I lost sleep. I felt awful. I started blocking wedding ads just because I couldn't stand to see the brides in their dresses. Trust me, if you're indecisive like me, just take however much time you need. You only get to wear a wedding dress once 
2) Try the dress on when you pick it up. I'm not sure if they offer this option everywhere, but I know they do at DB, and I will definitely be trying THIS one on when I go to pick it up. It would be horrific to leave the dress in the bag, take it out on your wedding day, and realize there's no way to make it fit.
