We started this blog with the disclaimer that we are not, in fact, wedding haters - you will not catch us chanting “Down with Love”, or standing up to protest any weddings.  I know Aretania and I stand by that statement, even in the darkest of bridesmaid moments. And there are some dark ones. 

So I’ve decided to share my recent positive (you read that right) dress shopping experience, and some observations for brides and bridesmaids that I made in the process.

I spent this past weekend in NYC with my bride and her younger sister. After a 6:15 wake up to make the two hour bus trip to meet them, we faced the daunting  task of visiting five dress shops…and more importantly, keeping a smile on my face. Note to brides: My bride started the day with coffee and a muffin for us - a full belly and lots of caffeination helped with the smiling. More on feeding of bridesmaids later.

First observation: In a city like NYC, there are a wide range of dress stores. Be ready for all of these experiences. The first stop was a department store, just to check it out – no luck here, but it gave us a chance to look at styles of dresses and get a sense of what the bride liked and didn’t like without a salesperson lingering or a million other bridesmaids fighting to look at the same dresses. (Sidenote: I should say that in preparation for this outing, the bride and I spent a lot of time online analyzing styles and fabrics…this also helped me to help her).

The second stop we, well, for lack of a better term, crashed. We didn’t have an appointment and were placed on a waiting list, but this store had been my brides  first choice in dresses. It was a your traditional dress shop, where you are assigned a consultant and have to parade around for all to see and evaluate. At first we got some attitude for showing up uninvited, but they finally let us at least scan the dresses. Good thing we did – in person, the dresses looked nothing like online and my bride’s first choice quickly dropped out of the running. Glad I didn’t make a second trip up to NYC just for that store!!!

(Break for more food here)

Our next store was quite the experience. Complete chaos, about 10 brides and their bridesmaids in a tiny 9th floor space. Huge dress selection, but almost no place to try them on. After sharing a fitting room with the sister, and trying on approximately 50 dresses, we found one that we thought could be “the one”, simply because it fit us both and didn’t looke THAT bad. However, I knew from the look on my brides face that this decision was more frustration than actually liking the dress.

So, feeling somewhat successful, and with an hour until our next appointment, our bride did what any good friend does: Fed us drinks….we made it an opportunity to test out different drink possibilities for the welcome drinks for the wedding reception. Multitasking and having some fun in the process!

Our next stop was pretty uneventful…I realized that my bride was starting to look a little down…and decided it was time for a bridsemaid peptalk…”We WILL find something, I promise! And your wedding will be wonderful!”…and eventually, we found another dress that replaced the first as “The one”….I was happy because it wasn’t hideous, the bride seemed happy…

But, something still didn’t seem 100%…so we hopped in a cab to our last stop, which, from the website, did not seem at all what the bride wanted. But we went, just in case. It was one of those places where they have about 50 dress styles, but all available in the same colors and fabrics. The sister of the bride and I each grabbed a style that we liked best, and, as if planned, walked out of the dressing rooms at the same time, looked at each other, looked at the bride and said, THIS IS IT!!!! VICTORY!!!!

One thing that we realized in the last step of this process is that we also had to keep the style and color of the brides dress in mind…not so they “matched” but so they had the same general style to them (ie, a super-modern one shoulder hot pink dress might not necessarily work with the traditional lace gown and veil)

So, with the dress selected we were off to….more drinks and snacks!! A real celebration!

The moral of the story is that although rare, dress shopping can be relatively painless. When I looked at some of the other bride/bridesmaid groups, they didn’t seem to be having nearly as much fun as us. We made it a girls day, laughed and took goofy pictures of the horrible dresses, and had plenty of food, drinks and downtime in between stops.