The Search for the Dress

Yesterday was a marathon wedding dress shopping day. I went to four - FOUR! - bridal salons and tried on I don't know how many dresses and posed for countless pics with dresses that were the wrong size clipped to me to get the effect. Exhausting! But, I enjoyed it. I never thought I'd be this girl.

And I'm almost done! I don't feel the need to look at any more dresses. I'm giving it a bit more thought, studying the pictures a little more, and soon I'll pick out The Dress and go buy it.

Funny, I went into this with some VERY specific ideas of what I wanted, and what I didn't want. First rule: NO STRAPLESS, and no poofy skirt. I'm not that kind of bride. Second iron-clad rule: NO VEIL. Any time a well-meaning wedding shop attendant came at me, beaming and holding a strip of tulle, I would practically hold up my fingers in a cross and hiss. NO.

Funny how some of your original ideas can go straight out the window...

Turns out, 90% of all wedding dresses are strapless for a reason: because they look really good on, even if you don't have a model body type. And the spaghetti straps that I had also nixed -- well, my top dress choice has spaghetti straps. Go figure.

Like I said, I did start off with a very clear idea of what I wanted. In early June of '08 I sat in a movie theater between my friends Justyna and Margaret, watching the Sex and the City movie. During the wedding dress montage scene, I inwardly gasped at one dress. There it was - The Dress that I wanted to get married in! It was so clear to me (and I should point out, Sweetie and I had only been dating, oh, about two or three weeks at the time. Even then, I knew).

Since then, I have been driving myself mad looking for images of that dress. You'd think it would be super easy to find - just Google Sex and the City Wedding Dress Oscar de la Renta. It's the sleeveless dress with a V-neck, and she's wearing a big red flower in her hair. SO elegant.

But instead of my dream dress, THIS is all that comes up when I try to Google it:


Aaack! Euww! No, no, no! BAD! Just so POOFY and HARSH and POINTY and unflattering and don't even get me started on that thing on her head. NO.

So I can't find a picture of that dream dress, but as it turns out, Jenna Bush wore a very similar Oscar de la Renta to her wedding. At least, I think it was similar -- why is she at that weird back angle in all of her wedding photos? At first I figured she was disguising a baby bump, but months later, no new Bush has entered the world (thank God for that!).

Anyway, pretty dress. But I haven't found anything similar that I like. So this probably won't be my wedding look after all (though I am still considering the big red flower in my hair like Carrie had).

One more thing: at Lilac Boutique in Alameda, they had a dress that was JUST like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy's! Now, I know that that dress is kind of a cliche at this point, but I was still excited to try it on. And whoah -- I was at once entranced, and utterly horrified. Bias cut is the least forgiving of all cuts. Every bump, every ripple of flesh is magnified. Oh, dear.

So, no slinky Carolyn dress for me either. But it's still a wonderful image, all these years later:


Loving the filmy wrap, the shoes, and the simple ponytail. Now those I can do...