The horror of finding Bridesmaids Dresses!

A lot of you have been requesting to hear more about my wedding! So rather than posting on my personal blog about the woes and craziness of wedding planning, I decided to change it up and post a bit here about it.

I find having to find bridesmaids things (shoes, clothes, accessories, hair/makeup, etc.) one of the hardest tasks for a bride-to-be. I say this from the bride's perspective AND the bridesmaid's perspective because when it comes down to it, there are just too many people's ideas and thoughts put into one... not only too many people.. too many WOMEN! haha!

I have realized many things being a bridesmaid and let me tell you this. If you have been asked to be a bridesmaid and are considering it - here are some things you should KNOW that are going to happen going into this: 1. This takes a lot of time! 2. Be prepared to drop over $500 [I average at about $1000 per each wedding I've been in] 3. Prepare to feel stress! LOL! If you can't handle the heat of the above three, then it may be better to say no!

Anyway.. wasn't I talking about dresses? Right.

The three things that a bride always have to consider: 

1) Personal style of your bridesmaids

2) Budget of your bridesmaids 

3) Your wedding vision 

Anyway.. I have to tell you, out of all wedding details I've done thus far, finding these dresses were by FAR the most stressful (believe it or not). Not because of my girls (they are fantastic!), but because I couldn't have take a longer and more drawn out process to get these darn dresses.

First things first. I went to a wonderful trunk show where they had these FANTASTIC cynthia rowley dresses for 30 dollars!!! I was like WHAT?! 30 bucks? So quickly my friend iphone googled to see if we could find the dress online... and YES! So I bought the two they had in a gorgeous charcoal color I wanted, and then went home to order the rest. Go on and google it - its SO pretty and romantic. You will love it. Okay, are you too lazy? Let me show you :) 

Fail. Long story short, this was a discontinued dress and all the sites that "said" they had it, didn't update their website yet OR was a replica shop. I had found one more - and was in high hopes of finding the last one, but 2 months later, I gave up hope. We even tried to find a different dress in the same fabric with the same color, but still no luck. So I decided to go on another venture to find the original dress I had envisioned for the wedding. 

The JCrew Claudia Halter Dress. 

I love the way this dress looked. It's simple yet romantic. I was googly eyed over it in Dark Charcoal, but couldn't bear to put my bridesmaids through 400 dollars worth of damage for just a dress (I mean and THEN alterations, shoes, accessories!?). This past week though.... JCrew was having a major sale off their sale section! 40% off sale items... and guess what dress was on it!?!? Lo and Behold, trusty ol' Claudia was there.. in weird colors and strange sizes. In Dark Charcoal they only had size 12 and 16, which unfortunately all my girls are way small. They did have 4 of that dress in size 8 in Graphite, which was a more medium grey, but my sister.. being an avid JCrew shopper said they would restock in the morning.

Every morning I diligently went on to search. Monday evening I told my sister (since she gets up around 6) to text me if any went up and I would come online to buy them. but she said there wasn't.. by the time I got up the only real "new" thing they had was the Claudia dress in pink in a size four. So I took matters in my own hands. I (with my body alarm clock - no alarm clock needed) woke up this morning at 5:30 to check to see if there were any updates. 

Claudia Graphite was avail in a 4, 6, and 10. They only had one size 4 and 6. So I decided. This was it.  They were on sale for 249.99 and then with the 40% off, they were only 150 each! What a steal! I bought a size 4,  6, and two 10s. . . and that is how I found :) 

our bridesmaids dresses!!! 

I can't wait to show you the final dresses (altered and all) on the girls : )