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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As one of my bridesmaids described it – the wedding is “classy country,” and I couldn’t agree more. That’s just who we are…and that being said we wanted that to reflect in every aspect of our wedding, especially in the way we dress.

www.jasminebridal.com

For me, this has been one of the easiest parts of wedding planning. I walked into the bridal salon and saw the dress I knew I was going to wear on the manikin. Although I did try on an awful lot of dresses that day, in the end I chose the dress I fell in love with that day. I got the most exciting call this weekend – my dress is here! I can’t wait to try it on

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This blog is dedicated to all the UK followers!  =)  I recently found this UK online clothing store that can sell across the whole world.  Of course, with some extra shipping costs.  Even though if you do buy the dresses from the US, the dresses are probably still cheaper then getting it at a regular bridal salon.  All the dresses are under $50 at Dorothy Perkins.  There’s such a wide selection of dresses that could be potentially for your lovely bridesmaids.  All dresses from Dorothy Perkins.

Taupe One Shoulder Dress: £24.00

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Dress shopping is a really big thing for everyone involved in the wedding except me right now. All of the other ladies related to my wedding are freaking out about finding the right dresses. Of course, I have been consulted as to the formality and color scheme, etc…

My mother changed her mind about her original dress and opted for a still very cost effective floor length gold dress with a jacket. It looks lovely on her and was on a super sale for $30… did I mention that we’re bargain shoppers?

Lilac Dude’s mom has a beautiful blue back-up dress in case she doesn’t find something that she loves for our wedding.

His grandmothers have both decided to wear pink. This confuses me because our colors are pistachio green and baby blue (they do look better together than that sounds!). I’ve said all along that I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable or feel like they look stupid, so although pink confuses me, I’ll roll with it.

Ursula of Switzerland dress in pink {Image from Ursula of Switzerland}

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Finally! This was meant to be one of my first posts I have had this post waiting for pictures forever! Sorry for the length, I think I’ve continued to add to it as I waited for pictures. I finally got the pictures, so here goes….

Come dress yourself in love, let the journey begin.
-Francesca da Rimini

I do believe this was Fressia Mom’s motto after Freesia Dude proposed. Almost immediately she was on me to go shopping for wedding dresses explaining how our schedules are only going to get busier and if we wait any longer we won’t be able to get a dress in time!!!

Now, aside from the fact that we had not set an official date due to the fact that we did not even know what city we would get married in yet, how did she know we would not be able to get a dress “in time”? Well, we will just attribute that to one of those things mom’s just know. We picked a date and location a few months after I picked out my wedding dress, and the dress decision was stress free since we went so early. Anyways, back to the story…

I was very nervous to go dress shopping. I had done plenty of searching online, and knew what I did not want as well as some ideas about what I did: primarily, I wanted something unique. I had no idea how I would find this, but planned on searching some consignment shops. However, Freesia Mom is not really up for this sort of thing and she and I set a date to go shopping the weekend after my 26th birthday. Freesia Dude could sense my concern and sweetly explained that he wasn’t able to go that weekend but he was sure my mom and I would have a very nice time. So sweet, yet had no idea that he would not be wedding dress shopping with me at all!

Now, to those who might like to involve their fiance’s in wedding dress shopping, I bring no condemnation at all. Freesia Dude is just not the type that could hang in a wedding dress salon while I try on a dress, let alone more than one. In addition, I love surprises, getting them and giving them…and this will be a surprise from me to him. He’d better love it!

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Credit: jcrew.com

Before I ever became engaged, I’d promised myself that I would be an EASY bride. No, not that kind of easy. Easy in the sense that I wouldn’t micromanage every teensy detail, I wouldn’t freak out over small things that didn’t matter. I would avoid at all costs having a bridezilla moment.

Part of that commitment to nonchalance was to let my bridesmaids choose their own dresses. The plan was to select a basic color palette and then leave them to their own devices to pick a dress that they loved and felt comfortable in. Everyone’s doing that nowadays anyway, right?

Well, easier said than done.
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