bridesmaid dress shopping

I haven't had a super clear vision of what I wanted in terms of bridal party attire, mostly I knew what I didn't want.  I've been in 5+ weddings and not once did I feel totally comfortable in my dress.  Now part of that may be that I was 40+ pounds overweight but the other part is that it is close to impossible to find one dress that will work for numerous body types.  I really wanted everyone to be comfortable in their dresses because I feel like you can tell in pictures when people are uncomfortable.  So I started by nixing the idea of matching dresses.

I wanted something classy and chic since our wedding is in the evening on NYE.  And I'm trying to keep color to a minimum.  Whenever people ask what my wedding colors are I say, "black, ivory & glitter."  So you may be thinking, awesome, black dresses.  But I don't want the girls in mismatched black dresses because then they won't stand out in the crowd.  My favorite part of the whole being a bridesmaid thing is that you can tell by looking around the room who the important ladies are, and that wouldn't happen in black.  I debated adding another fun color but it just wasn't working.  Finally it hit me, pewter!  It is sleek and classy plus we could dress it up with fun jewelry and shoes like black!

Now that I knew what I wanted it was time to find some dresses.  My bridal party all happened to be in town for the holiday weekend so I made a couple of appointments.  Five of my seven bridesmaids were able to make it to the first store (Wedding Belles) and we had a bumpy start.  It seemed like no one wanted to pick anything.  I've read about this happening when brides give their girls too much freedom, they just want to be told what to wear.  So, I grabbed a bunch of dresses and asked them to try on whatever they liked.

Nicole and Edra came out in the first two dresses below and looked fantastic!  It was settled, satin was the fabric!  I asked the consultant to take away everything that wasn't satin and the remaining three girls picked from there.  Here, in no particular order are the dresses five of my girls will be wearing...

                              Nicole                             Janey                            Edra

Shana                         Sarah

Unfortunately Lorie and Kat couldn't meet us until we got to the second store (Tesi Bridal) and we didn't have any luck there.  To start with they didn't carry Alfred Angelo dresses so we couldn't pick anything to match the others but I didn't mind starting fresh.  The real issue was that they didn't have much at all, the owner showed us a few catalogs and asked us to mark dresses we wanted to see.  I did and she didn't have anything marked!  It was a huge waste of time!

Therefore, I'll be going back to the first store with Lorie & Kat when they have some free time to pick out their dresses.  I'd like to have them ordered by the end of June so we can be sure they're in with plenty of time to share before the wedding.  

It was a really fun night and I was extremely pleased with how easy it ended up being picking 7 similar yet different dresses.