A Dress, A Dress, To Find a Dress (Prt. 1)

So...I am not too interested in going all the way back through all of my old posts and seeing if I ever talked about the J. Crew Daphne dress. I know I had it in my inspiration boards, but I'm not sure if I talked about it being my favorite dress out of ALL THE DRESSES. I've been watching a lot of Say Yes to the Dress on the old Roku lately while I dick around on the computer, and I totally understand all these girls who look at every dress and hate it. I looked through so many dresses in magazines and online, and never once saw a dress I wanted to maybe try on. My issues with picking a wedding dress were:

1. I don't particularly like white dresses. I've only ever owned one in my whole life, and it only looks good when I'm mega-tan.
2. I don't particularly like 90% of the wedding dresses out there.
3. I tend to daydream about what's beautiful, not necessarily what looks beautiful on me.

Keeping all of those things in mind, I finally happened onto a few different posts about the J. Crew Daphne dress:

Image via here

I fell in love. It was effortlessly beautiful. I loved that it had pockets, I loved that it looked like something you didn't have to wear complicated undergarments with, it didn't have some crazy train that would have to be bustled and shoved into a taxi at the end of the night. I knew it would be figure flattering because empire waisted dresses and things look good on me, plus they're universally figure flattering. It was simple, classic and lovely. Given that we married at a bakery called Lovely, it made sense to have such a dress. Only one problem...they stopped making it years ago. I scoured the internet, but of course *when* I was able to maybe, kind of, not really find this highly sought after dress, I, of course, only found sample sizes. Ladies, I present to you my non-sample size ass:

photo by me!

I became disheartened. I couldn't even bring myself to consider other dresses. I had looked through many, and had been blogging about and therefore seeing a lot of weddings, and I just didn't like my options. Plus, I couldn't afford to spend a ton of cash on a wedding dress. I wasn't one of those Kleinfeld's Brides who busts outs with a "I absolutely cannot go above $10,000," as if that kind of money is just no big deal. It is a big deal. Whether, in terms of wedding planning or not, we want to admit it, $10K is a lot of money. And I didn't have it to blow on some dress that matched the dress of my dreams that was universally sold out.

Not being able to find the Daphne dress left me without any real ideas for what to do about a wedding dress. Whereas most girls get their dress first, I seemed to be doing everything BUT the dress. Everyone would ask me if I had picked out my dress yet, and I would always sheepishly respond that no, I hadn't. I finally decided that I had two options: have a replica of the Daphne made OR find a vintage dress. The vintage dress idea was really my preference, and what I would have wanted. It made sense given our location and the look of our wedding, as well as my personal taste. But shopping vintage is a tough deal for me. I'm tall, large chested, wide-shouldered, and though I have big hips, I do not have a big butt or big thighs. I know I'm describing a clown right now, but really, the point I'm trying to convey is that vintage sizes do not always match up with my body, and so buying vintage clothes is always a pain in the ass...and now (or then, rather), I'm only heavier, so I can only imagine how much harder it's going to be. That's when my friend B-Mac told me her mother would be willing to make my dress...

...And that's also where I end this post. Tomorrow, I will post the rest of the story. That's right, I'm annoying like that. Seriously though, this post will go on and on forever, and you will get bored. I must break it up. Check back for the rest of the dress story. You'll appreciate the ending (I should be sainted for what I went through with my wedding dress).