This is what I thought my wedding party would look like. Minus, you know, the
me being Christina Hendricks part:
Or perhaps this (minus the whole yellow floral thing):
Basically, I envisioned an eclectic mix of dresses. I wanted our wedding to be an excuse for my favorite women to buy themselves an awesome new dress they like (within a certain color family), not a reason for me to dictate their clothing choices. I feel super-weird about telling my friends what to wear. And generally, I don't like matching bridesmaid dresses because I don't feel good about grown-ass women wearing the same dress. Women don't like showing up to a party in the same dress as some other chick, period. But my girls had other ideas!
Five of my six 'maids, my mother, and I went to
Bridal Warehouse on Saturday. I wanted the girls to wear shorter hemlines and dresses in a certain color family. Other than that, anything was okay with me. Chiffon? Sure! Lace! Cool. Satin? Yep. They pulled armloads of dresses they liked and headed to the dressing rooms. The fashion show was fun.
My friends and sisters are so pretty!
Unfortunately, Bridal Warehouse mostly stocks a weird and limited number of sample sizes. If you want to shop there, keep that in mind. It was difficult to imagine what some of the dresses might look like in the proper size, because they were so very, very off. Until, that is, Stephanie came out of her dressing room wearing The Dress and announced, "I'm wearing this!" It was so flattering, everyone wanted to try it. The Dress came in a size that somehow fit everyone, and it made all my girls look beautiful.
They wanted the same dress.
What was a bride to do? Throw a fit and say, "But I imagined that you would all want different dresses, waaaaaah!" Um, no. I wanted this to be an excuse for them to buy any dress they liked--and they all
happened to love the same dress. It's a fantastic, dress, too: Lauren says, "It makes me feel like Audrey Hepburn on a boat." Um, who
doesn't want to feel like Audrey Hepburn on a boat?!
Since they knew I craved variety, we picked two almost-the-same colors. Three girls will wear the greenish version of The Dress, and three girls will wear the bluish version. We're going to look less like the other pictures, and more like this. And my mother is
so relieved!!!