What turned your hair Gray?!

I haven't gone dress shopping yet, but I already know that having my mom there will stress me out! haha!! We have different styles and she's the type of person that thinks they're ALWAYS right about everything. So finding a dress that I love without her criticizing it is going to be a struggle.

I think another thing that will stress me out is my budget. I'm wanting to pay for my dress myself, and I know wedding dresses are WAY overpriced. So I've only saved dresses that are within my price range that I know the store will have. I'm also only going to stores that carry dresses that are in my price range!

I'm excited about dress shopping...but also very nervous haha!

My gray hair moment was the dress shopping, but the alterations place ruining my dress. 😂 all is fine now, but that was the one moment where I felt panicked.

View Quoted Comment Oh boyyy, I feel ya. My sister and FMIL are very blunt as well. I made sure to not invite them when I went wedding dress shopping.

View Quoted Comment Hi Dallas! Oh goodness, I could only imagine. I'm glad it's all solved now.

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I'm only having my mom come to one and seeing how it goes haha! She lives in another state, so I know she'd love to be present for at least one 'before the wedding' event.

View Quoted Comment That is so sweet. My mom lives 400 miles away and is too scared to travel due to COVID.
Definitely enjoy your mom even though she may give you a gray strand. Better than her not being there at all 💗

I didn’t take anyone with me while dress shopping because I want the dress I like, and hear no judgement. I haven’t regretted it so far. There were many dresses I liked, but I didn’t like them on me. I visited a couple boutiques and I never thought I would feel emotional when I tried “the dress”. I tear up and I said yes to the dress without asking how much it was 🤭. I don’t see a dress I like more than what I have now. So it was worth the price 🤪.

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You're so right!

Dress shopping was actually very enjoyable for me. I had lost a lot of weight but was still expecting to dislike the way I looked, but I ended up loving most of the dresses I tried on.

I had done a lot of research beforehand and came in with a pretty good idea of what I liked and a list of dresses I wanted to try on, keeping in mind that I might pick something different. I called a couple of salons to see if they had samples of the dresses I liked. I knew that bridal sizes ran small and I knew what wedding dresses cost, so neither of those were a surprise.

The only negative thing I had happen during the initial appointment process was one consultant who was very cold and unhelpful and had a very "formulaic" process she wanted to follow. I did not buy a dress from there, nor did I seriously consider it.

Deciding between my final 4 probably gave me some gray hairs, though. It was very hard to pick, especially because the choices were somewhat similar.

View Quoted Comment Awww that is touching. And I agree, I decided to look a few times without taking anyone.

View Quoted Comment Well, that's certainly a good frustration to have. Better to have a few dress choices that you love to none at all. Good on ya for the weight loss (I'm assuming it was healthy weight loss).

D. The associate kept grabbing dresses with sleeves and I’m like we are getting married on a 90 degree beach like I already informed you... so this isn’t going to work. THEN the owner came out and was like if you buy your favorite dress before leaving today, I’ll take $200 off;
I looked at her and said I didn’t like anything here. Seeee yah.

View Quoted Comment Woah! That is dissappointing. It was like they werent even listening to you. Good thing you gave them the deuces ✌

I’ve found my dress but my gray hair
Moment is dealing with alterations. I had to buy the sample size because every other dress in that style is ivory or an off white. And i want a pure white dress 100%. The sample size is about 1 dress size down from what I currently wear and I don’t plan on losing much weight. Alterations has assured me they can accommodate me with that dress but reading stories and posts on here of users who are dealing with/have dealt with similar situations makes me uneasy.

I got my dress online so i did not have the typical shopping experience but i will say that the wedding planning process absolutely had moments of stress for me overall

View Quoted Comment Yes! You briught up a good point. Alterations can be just as if not more stressful than the shopping.

I actually really enjoyed dress shopping. I live in a pretty rural area and there is literally only one store that has wedding dresses within an hour of me. That ended up being both a good thing and a bad thing. I knew exactly where to go to have a bridal boutique experience and didn't have to stress over setting multiple appointments and too many options to choose from, but I was also pigeon holed into only being able to try on a few designers and styles that fit a certain aesthetic (the bridal boutique was named "Country Bridals" and aptly had mostly traditional styles with few chic, modern options). Also, not a lot of sleeved options, but enough for me to figure out I liked the way sleeved looked a lot more than I liked how they felt! The associates were wonderful, I was treated so well and had a great experience, and they were very good about sticking within my budget and only showing me dresses I could afford. I had such a fun time, even though I didn't end up buying my dress from there.

I ended up eventually buying my dress online. I knew I didn't want to spend a ton of money and liked the idea of a pre-loved dress, so I got my dress off StillWhite. I think the most nervous thing about that was spending a lot of money on something I had never seen in person or tried on and didn't even know if it would fit, and if I hated it I couldn't return it. So it was a bit of a gamble but I ended up loving the dress and it worked out for me. It even fit pretty well without needing alterations and already had a bustle added, so I was still able to wear it when Covid threw all of our original plans out the window.

My other "gray hair moments" were probably related to buying my "other" dresses and our elopement. Because we ended up having a Covid elopement, I didn't end up having a rehearsal dinner or reception or any reason to wear any of the other white/ivory dresses I bought. I also wore my actual wedding dress for our outdoor elopement and was a bit nervous that I would get it dirty and wouldn't be able to wear it again for our future wedding celebration, but after about 45 minutes of picking sticks and debris out of the lace, it looked no worse for wear, and it probably helped that it wasn't "brand new" to begin with. I can definitely wear it again if we are ever able to have our "redo" wedding event.