Well, some of my gals and I went bridesmaid dress shopping over the weekend. Needless to say, we had quite the experience. The issue I’m having with my lovely ladies is that I literally have 7 different body types. Large bust. Small bust. Broad shoulders. Possibly will be pregnant. Super tall. Super short. and even larger bust. I decided a long time ago that I didn’t care what style each of the gals wore; simply wanted them all to be the same color. I thought this would make it easier because I knew of all the different body types, however, it almost made things more difficult. We had to literally choose a product line then the lovely, patient salespeople would pull every dress made by that designer and we would try them on. Oh boy…quite the experience. We would find a few that we liked but then couldn’t find one in that line that fit the more “blessed” girls. Ahhh! It was a lose-lose situation and by the end of the afternoon, I could tell the girls were exhausted. So…the moral of the story is that I need to do some more research on what different designers offer and if they are available in our color, which is coral. Here are a few that we liked but are probably not it. I’ll keep you posted if we find some! I mean…when we find some!

Dress by Pretty Maids. Obviously not in our color but a nice dress nonetheless!

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With a month left to go until my wedding, my mother and my groom’s mother are without a dress for the occasion.  In fact, they are in exact opposite situations.

My mother (who has only worn a dress once in her life) hasn’t even started looking while my future mother in law has six dresses, in which she can’t decide amongst them.

To give my mom a jump start on her dress search, I suggested this cute little number from Nordstrom.com ($138).

Let me give you some background information: attending a black tie optional wedding by candlelight, age is mid 40s, shy personality, size 10.

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When I first got engaged, Olive Mom let me in on a well-kept secret she had been hiding from me. Her good friend, let’s call him Mr. Style, is not only an up-and-coming wedding dress designer, but he also has a close, personal relationship with the owners of Kleinfeld’s in New York. To say that I was ecstatic when learning I would have my appointment to try on dresses there, and with them, would be the world’s largest understatement.

While that appointment is slowly approaching (it’s the first weekend of August), Olive Mom and I also went to a few local bridal stores a few weeks ago. Olive Mom knew how excited I was to go to New York, so she wanted me to be able to have a basic idea of what dress style and fabric I liked beforehand so I would not be completely overwhelmed by the bridal mecca that is Klienfeld’s. It was a WONDERFUL idea.

Let the search begin!

Here is what I learned:

1. Try on everything. While my gut feeling was to go with a fit-and-flare or mermaid shape with no straps, I tried on almost every silhouette when I went shopping. I wanted to make sure that what I thought was the most flattering in my head actually was on my body.

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One of the newer wedding trends that I was so excited to find out about was wearing bright colored shoes with your wedding dress! I had never really heard of the idea until one of my really good friends told me she was wearing bright red shows with her dress. I found this to be such an exciting concept. How awesome? This might not be a new idea to most but for me it is! My friend looked FANTASTIC in her red shoes and she rocked the hell out of them! She danced all night in them! They even matched her bridesmaids dress color. This is a small way to add color to your dress and add a part of your personality.

This friend of mine loves shoes and she got to wear some awesome ones!

What kind of shoes do you think you would wear? How much would you spend? Would you go with the classic white?

What about flat colored shoes?

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So my quest to find the perfect bridesmaid dress began the day after we got engaged.  Literally.  That Saturday morning, 3 crazy Peachy ladies (Peachy Mom, Peachy MOH and I) went to one of the more popular bridal salons in our area just to look.  We each swore to each other we weren’t buying.  And we didnt.  But we tried on lots of options including this one: And this one…

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I am on a wedding high right now! My wedding dress came in and it is absolutely gorgeous. 100%  my dream dress. I couldn’t be happier!! The only downside is I still have a wait a year to wear it! Ahhhhh!! Patience is a virtue, right? Well, something like that.

For those buds out there that haven’t started their dress hunt, I have just a few tips that I discovered during my adventure of dress shopping. My number one piece of advice is research, research, research! Not only should you research designs and styles of dresses that you like but also designers. This will help you be ten times more prepared than the bride that comes in with NO idea what they want. It makes for a much more productive appointment. Which brings me to my next piece of advice, make appointments! I highly recommend sucking it up and taking a day off of work to go dress shopping during the week. My entourage and I ventured out on a Monday afternoon and went to two salons where we literally had them all to ourselves.  Making appointments will keep you on track throughout the day as well as give you the attention from the sales staff that you deserve.

Check out WeddingWire’s Wedding Dress gallery

When it comes to actually trying on dresses, I highly recommend trying on one of each style: princess, a-line, mermaid, strapless, halter, etc, etc. Even though you may have an idea of what you want, you might be surprised how some dresses fit and make you look fantastic! When your consultant is pulling dresses, make sure you give her your absolute top price point that you’re willing to spend BEFORE she starts pulling dresses. I made this mistake. At one salon, she pulled a dress that was about $2,000 more that I was willing to spend and I feel in love. Thank goodness I put it back because I found one at another place that I loved even more!

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This post may seem a bit like jumping the gun since I haven’t written about my planning yet.  However, this decision has literally taken over the vast majority of my wedding planning brain.  So I figured what better way to help me make this decision than to ask all of you lovely buds and fellow brides and readers-should I have my bridal party wear long or short dresses?  As of right now, my goal is to have my fabulous ladies (5 of them to be exact-all whom you will get to meet shortly) wear a rasberryish hot pinkish color like this:

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So we had our engagement pictures taken (finally) last week. First of all- let me just say that is was an absolute blast!!! Our photographers are amazing! But one of the most stressful things I had to do was decide what in the world Apricot Dude and I were going to wear! Let me share what we decided to go with, then provide some tips on how to pick and show you how they turned out!

I knew I wanted two different types of pictures. First, I wanted to do some more traditional, formal pictures that I know my Grandma would love. Secondly, I simply wanted some that were us. In jeans and comfy shirts, flip flops….just being ourselves! I was fortunate to find a dress for our more formal pictures that I LOVED. So I had one outfit down. Now onto number two- and I had no idea. I seriously think I bought 5 or 6 different shirts. I knew I wanted something solid, light colored and that sort of matched our wedding colors (peachy/corals/greens). Finally, I made a decision. Well, I thought I had. The day of our pictures, I had a few minutes to kill before my hair appointment so I ran into Banana Republic. Just browsing, I came across this fabulous shirt that I knew I wanted to wear for our pictures. It was like it was just calling for me! So I bought it and it turned out to be perfect!

Now for Apricot Dude….he was pretty open to basically whatever I thought would look nice. We settled on his favorite yellow button down shirt and khakis for our more formal pictures and jeans and polo for the others. It did take us quite a few stores to find a light green polo that we thought would look great with mine. (Quick word of advice: we found the EXACT same Tommy Hilfinger polo at TJMaxx for half the price of Macy’s!)

Here are a few tips that I have when looking for engagement outfits because there certainly are LOTS of decisions to make:

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…that you never wear white to someone’s wedding. (Unless you’re a bridesmaid in a British wedding then that’s traditional.)

Rumor spread to me that a wedding guest who will be sitting on the groom’s side of the church, fully intends to re-wear a very expensive WHITE dress to our wedding. It upset me so much, that I nearly cried. (The guest is not British, nor in the wedding party)

A beautiful dress to wear somewhere other than a wedding {Image from: lafemmefashion.com}

It really should go without saying that the bride is the only person in white on her wedding day. And I’ll be devastated if a guest shows up in a very expensive white dress, especially since my wedding dress was in the same price range. Forgive me if I start sounding like bridezilla, but this is like a huge slap in the face that this girl is already planning to wear white to my wedding.

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No, I don’t mean that I have multiple wedding dresses to wear throughout the evening. I mean that as a bride, I wear a lot of different dresses for a lot of different occasions.

When I was younger I was not a dress kind of girl. I actually wore jeans to church one Easter Sunday! But I think I grew out of that, you still rarely find me wearing a dress more than once every couple of months.

So why do I have a lot of dresses?

There is the dress from my shower. It wasn’t what I had imagined, but it looked sweet and bridal to me.

Paisley tube dress from Body Central, bodyc.com

That's what it looked like at my bridal shower

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