The Hunt for a Dress Begins...

Girls and their wedding dresses, it’s one of the most important decisions that you make about your wedding…you envision what you want by looking through thousands of pages of wedding magazines…and I mean THOUSANDS of pages and pictures. You pull everything that you MIGHT like to try on, and then you go about trying to find the dresses in your area or in an area close to you where you can go and try it on.

And just like any other girl, I have been doing the same thing. Some of you may laugh at me, but as soon as I knew that I was getting engaged, I started my wedding folder. Into this folder I put all the pictures that I found that I liked of anything wedding-related, along with articles to read that might help me get other ideas or with the planning end of things. And this folder has become my bible of sorts. I typically don’t go anywhere without it. I LOVE this book!

I have collected SO many images of dresses that I like, that I decided a few weeks back that it’s probably time for me to stop collecting new images and focus on the images that I have collected. Look for any common themes, like color, material, designs that run through the selections so that I’ll have a better idea of what I’m looking for when I get into an actual bridal salon. For myself, I think that this is a smart idea. There are so many styles of dresses in the salons that it’s SO easy to get overwhelmed when walking in without any idea of what you are looking for. Of course, going in open-minded is nice too, because then you can be truly open to what the assistant might suggest for your coloring or body type and all.

But I don’t really like to not have at least some say in things, as most of you know! So I started glancing back through my pages and before long I noticed a few things about the dresses that had been catching my eye.

#1 – most of them were fairly simple in design.
#2 – my favorites all had a little bit of sparkle to them, but not overdone with detailing
#3 – I knew that I loved the ivory dresses
#4 – most of them were strapless
#5 – I was really drawn to the “wrap style” that seemed to help accentuate your waist

The other thing that I noticed was that I had a few favorites. And most of them were from one designer over and over that seemed to catch my eye – even in the bridesmaids dresses. Alfred Angelo just seemed to catch my eye over and over. So I did the thing that makes the most sense to me – I went to their website and started perusing the dresses online. This way I could check out pricing and sign up for special offers. Imagine my surprise when I see that none of my favorite Alfred Angelo bridal gowns were priced over $1,000 which was my HIGH limit on my dress budget. I was shocked! I mean, I love Target and Ross, but for a wedding dress, I was envisioning that I would be hard pressed to find something nice and fancy for less than $1k. Go me!

And then imagine my shock and surprise when I discovered that the new bridal store that opened within the last few months at one of our newer shopping centers in South Austin was an Alfred Angelo store! I mean, there aren’t many times in a girl’s life when her personal guardian angel speaks directly to her…but this was one of them for me! It was just looking like it was meant to be. Now, to find time when I’m in town and free from other obligations to go by and look….