One of the approx. 5,000 rejected dresses

“Oh, don’t worry about finding a wedding dress it will be soooo easy.” or one of my favorites “My wedding dress was the first dress I tried on.” or this classic line of “You will know it is your dress when you see it.” They are all lies I tell you. All lies. First, finding a wedding dress is not easy. The first dress I tried on barely fit over my thighs, so that was not my wedding dress. Lastly, you aren’t always going to get that “you know it when you see it” feeling when seeing/trying on your wedding dress.

My wedding dress search started at Catan’s Bridal in Strongsville. It is the largest bridal shop I’ve ever been so I thought why not start there…it has to have something I like, right? For this appointment I took my mom and my future mother-in-law. After looking through all of the “couture” bridal dresses of the store, I picked about 15 dresses to try on. I guess that number of dresses is higher than most people try on in one sitting. After showing pictures of my favorite Jenny Packham dresses hoping to get a response I got nothing. The lady that worked with me didn’t really pull any dresses and seemed like she was completely stumped in what kind of dresses I should try on. After trying on all of the dresses I like two of them. The first dress was $8,000, so that was out and the second dress I felt pretty in but it wasn’t a wow dress. After trying on the dresses I found in the store I asked about seeing a dress I found in the Pronovias catalog. The sales lady tried to convince me that I didn’t want that dress because it was too cheap. Smooth move lady…that was a real effective sales technique. I walked away from Catan’s feeling okay about my wedding dress search but not confident.

But when I came home and looked at the pictures of me in the wedding dresses, I balled my eyes out. I felt like I looked like I weighed 500 lbs in all of the dresses. I felt like everyone was lying to me that I looked nice in the dresses just to make me feel better. I know now that wasn’t the case, but it sure felt like that at the time. What they don’t tell you when you take pictures at the bridal shops is sometimes moms do not know how to take good pictures with camera phones. They take pictures when you are not posed, the pictures are blurry, and they take them at the least flattering angles. You gotta love moms but I should have looked at the pictures they took at the store to check to see if I looked good, so I wouldn’t have a freak out. Also another thing  they don’t tell you is that the lighting in all bridal shops suck. The spotlights in the stores make odd shadows everywhere on your face and body and they make you look completely washed out. Here is an example of some of the great pictures you get in a bridal shop.

A picture of one of the rejected dresses.
Notice the blurriness, my paleness, my eyes look like black holes. But at least I’m posing in this one.