Don't Stress About the Dress! Part One of the Outfit Adventures!

Hello all! Let me start by apologizing for my long silence! The iron fist of academia is steadily hammering us down with work! But I have the three C's to help: coffee, Casablanca, and company! Let the games begin! :) I'm taking a necessary break, but to avoid losing momentum, here I am- posting! Something I kept meaning to talk about was dress buying. Well, part of it anyway. One thing that I had a hard time tearing my sights from was the shorter dresses. The quirky, the spunky, the easy to dance in! They all earned a wistful sigh from me as I dutifully looked at A-lines, empire wastes, and mermaid silhouettes. I was looking for the perfect dress, but I was a bit disgruntled to find that none of them were perfect. Like my kind of perfect. When you're an "off the beaten path" kind of girl, you expect to have to search for things that are inherently representative of your style; but nothing was coming close. Still I let me eyes wander to short dresses and vintage frocks of all styles, furtively stealing glances at those adorable hemlines; fantasizing about not having to go through endless dress alterations (I'm 5'0"...its a fact of life! Half of prom season was just getting my dresses fitted), or the myth where it's required to have someone hold your dress while you pee (a phenomenon that I wasn't looking forward to). I wanted something cute, something to dance in, something to show off my legs (both because they're not a bad feature for me to show, and because it helps me look taller). And then a solution so simple was opened to me. I raised the subject to Brenden tentatively, curious of his reaction. A beaming smile unfurled on his face, as he and I discussed the excellence that would be a short dress for our wedding. The hunt was on again! One conversation turned me into an Amazonian of wedding dress shopping. I ran through jungles of Etsy pages and sliced through pages of "vintage wedding dresses" online, half of which oddly resembled ship sails. (Protip: When resorting to Craigslist, if the wedding dress ad has "gorgeous", "classic", or "made for a princess" in the title- RUN! It's most likely from the 80s, which means you can guarantee that the sleeves alone have their own zip code, and lace has most likely infiltrated the bodice as moss on ancient trees!) And still no dress that made me want to make like matrimony and commit. Then Modcloth did it again. I saw their Paper Lanterns Dress, and it caught my eye with a death grip of adorable fashions. It was perfect! The skirt was bouncy but not huge, the sleeves were present without taking over the dress, and the cut down the front (while a tiny scootch more than I expected) was a classy neckline. I loved it so much, I bought it on the spot, and the second it came in and I tried it on, I had no doubts. It fit like it was made for me. The color, while not white, was more of an almond, and it fits with our November wedding theme so well! The biggest thing is taught me is that you have to pick what's right for you, and not to worry about the rest. For any interested, the link to the dress is here :D ! Pictures will follow, and Part Two of this story- The Quest for the Shoes!