The Stress of the Dress

Wedding Madness

When Alan and I decided to get married we wanted to keep it simple and sweet. I wanted to have a small wedding and I did not want to spend a lot of money. I recently found out that the price of our wedding package at the mexican resort we chose went up... and today I paid substancially more for my wedding dress then what I had hoped for. (Bye Bye Budget!) I kept receiving so much pressure to buy a dress bigger and better and fancier than what I had in mind. Picking out a SIMPLE wedding dress is hard enough. You have to keep in mind things like the venue (which I have never seen before) the formality of the event, color schemes, and -of course- you want to find something that is comfortable, looks good on you, expresses your individuality AND fits into your budget.

These are the Mistakes that I made that ended up freaking me out:

- I did not have a clear vision of what I wanted before I started asking for everybody's opinion. 

- I did not have a clear budget.

- I started overanalyzing everything once I realized that finding a dress was actually an important task, which only ended up making me upset.

These are Circumstances that did not help my stress level:

- Most wedding dress boutiques only carry sample dresses in large sizes. I could swim in the mounds of extra tulle of some of the dresses I tried on. In order to give you an idea of what the dress would look like on you, attendants will use clips to pin/tuck the excess dress parts away. The result is that you have a dress molded to your body by pins and clips, which ususally makes the dress look extra good on you. If you were to buy said dress in your actual size it probably would not mold itself to your body in the same way. This scared me into buying a dress at the only location where I could find interesting dresses my size: David's Bridal. David's Bridal is AWESOME. They were super nice and patient with me as I tried on a grand portion of their dresses over the course of many hours. However, this severely limited my options of dresses to choose from. 

- Wedding dresses, as with all other things wedding related, are extremely expensive. For those of you who know what a cheap-skate I am and how little I truly care about dresses, you can imagine how much of a physiological barrier I have about spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars on something I would wear only once for a few hours. I simply could not understand how people can accept wedding dress prices so nonchalantly. Thanksfully, David's Bridal is somewhat reasonably priced. But still, this new acceptance was hard for me. I work hard for my money. 

These are the Key Phrases that made me enter panic mode:

- Your wedding dress is the most important part of the wedding because everything is centered around it, from bridesmaid's attire to wedding cake.

- If you do not find a dress you love then you will end up hating it! Can you imagine looking the pictures 10 years from now and still regretting that you did not buy the dress that you really wanted?... pictures are all you will have left. 

- You only get married ONCE in your life, hopefully anyway, so you need to acknowledge it and make the best of it. If you don't buy a big, beautiful dress now then you will sqander this once in a lifetime opportunity. 

I do not think people realize how damaging those types of phrases can be. I know people only say them with good intentions, but geez, can you give a bride a break? 

I was reduced to tears I was so conflicted and confused about everything. This made me even more upset because I realized how ridiculous my problem was. My problem was about choosing a dress! How had I, the independent minded, educated, liberal woman who wanted a simple and sweet wedding, get so caught up in this dress madness? MADNESS!!!??!?!?!

Well, I have a dress now. It is a lovely dress and I will enjoy wearing it, but I feel defeated by the wedding madness.