Take 2: Wedding Dress for Sale

I recently tried selling the dress I'd first bought on eBay, but had no luck. I've now listed it at the 100 Layer Cake Marketplace, in the hopes that it will sell there. If you're interested, it can be seen here.

Wedding Dress for Sale

I'm finally getting around to trying to resell the first wedding dress I bought. It's a new, perfect condition, size 8, ivory, strapless, beaded wedding gown by Emerald Bridal. You can bid on it on eBay here! Tell your friends!

Bridesmaids' Dresses!

I went shopping with 3/5 of my bridesmaids last week. My sister Laura, and my cousins Gina and Jamie are local, but my sister Anna is away at school, and Ben's sister Laura lives on the other side of the country. We went to the J. Crew Bridal Boutique in Manhattan, and then hit up a couple other stores - some combination of Bloomingdale's, H&M, GAP, Banana Republic, Zara. 

I was not the nicest person to shop with. I find making clothing decisions to be very stressful. I am not even remotely qualified to make fashion choices for myself, much less for anyone else. 

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The above was the part of this post that I had written before today happened. It was going to be all about how I was an unlikeable grouch while we were shopping, and the salesladies at J. Crew were unhelpful because the dresses I wanted were only available online, and they played (or were) dumb about what was available online, but (after I apologized for being a grump) it all turned out okay in the end, because we ordered the dresses online and that was it!

And then the dresses showed up. Awesome, right? Or it would have been, if they had all been the right color! And if I were a good practical bride with my priorities straight, I'd still be writing a post about how it'll all be okay in the end, because the color of anyone's dress has nothing to do with my wedding, my relationship, or my marriage, and that's what's really important on my wedding day.

Instead . . . I'm pissed. And frustrated, and freaking out. Because they were on sale, which means all sales were final, and what if they won't take it back, even when the mistake was J. Crew's and not ours? And what if they run out of the right color (which is being discontinued) while we're resolving this error, and there's NO WAY for my sister Anna to wear the same color as everyone else? And the dress was labeled as being the right color (clover), when it was actually the wrong color (wintermint) . . . what if all the "clover" dresses left in their inventory are actually wintermint dresses labeled as clover dresses, and there's ALREADY no way to buy another dress in the same color as everyone else's? Do I have to start over and pick a whole new dress? And eat the cost of the dresses already bought? Do I leave Anna in a different color dress, which is in no way complementary to the color of the other dresses? She's one of my maids of honor, but I need to either have both of my maids of honor wear the same thing as everyone else, or have them both in something different . . . if I have one maid of honor in something different, it looks like I'm just having one maid of honor, and then my sister Laura gets left out, and THAT'S not right. 

Anyway, this is what the dress is supposed to look like: 

(Silk chiffon Sophia dress by J. Crew)

Update

It's been a while.

We went through a period of time where we sort of thought, "Well, we've taken care of all the big stuff. We can sit back and relax now!" That more or less lasted until I moved home, and my mom politely informed me that there was so much left to do and that I was not doing it fast enough.

The ensuing weeks have involved lots of decision making. Or rather, lots of attempted decision making. We have discussed extensively, but not made any decisions about, everything from favors to bridesmaids dresses to flowers to where to register to the song to which we'll have our first dance. We've made lists: of songs to have the band play, of things to register for, of guests who will need hotel rooms, of Mass settings we like, of songs to have the band NOT play.

With all the wedding talk we've been doing, none of what we accomplished seemed substantial enough to justify blog posts.

But I just made a phone call that seemed very substantial indeed. My dress has come in, and I just set up my appointment to try it on at the store! To put on, for the very first time, my very own wedding dress, the actual, physical clothes I will wear when I marry Ben!

Wedding Dress Friday: This time, it's for real

This past weekend, I went home, with the intention of showing my mom the dress I had bought and looking at bridesmaid dresses with my sisters and my cousins. My mom was disappointed not to have been there when I bought the dress, and - given my unspoken misgivings - I agreed I was going to look at just a few more dresses. We went to RK Bridal, in Manhattan, which has both bridesmaid and wedding dresses. The whole point was supposed to be looking at bridesmaid dresses. I already had a wedding dress, right? I was just humoring my mom, right? But we spent most of the morning trying on wedding dresses.

RK Bridal doesn't take reservations, so we made sure to get there early, before the store opened, and we managed to get our names first on the list for wedding dresses, which meant we were the first group to be assigned a consultant. Our consultant was Olga, who was fantastic. I probably tried on a dozen dresses, which, added to the 2 dozen or so I'd tried on at the Running of the Brides, puts me way over the average for number of wedding dresses tired on (which I think is around 10-12). (Remember when I said I'd try on a couple dresses and pick a pretty one, and be done with it?)

The dresses - most of them - were gorgeous. It's a completely different thing, I realized, too, to try on a dress at an actual wedding dress store. (They use binder clips to hold the dress in place so you don't have to just imagine how it would look if it actually fit! Binder clips!)

My sister Laura got there late, and so she'd missed the first couple dresses I'd tried on. After I'd tried on my dozen or so, and ruled out several, I started over, trying on what was left a second time. I walked out of the dressing room, in a gown that my mom, sister Anna, and cousin Jamie had liked the first time, but which Laura was seeing for the first time. She instantly burst into tears.

That means that's the dress I'm supposed to wear, doesn't it?

It's not the dress I bought.

I spent a while going back and forth, eventually, between the dress that made Laura cry and the dress I ended up buying. Olga told me that the first was more "bridal" and the second more "sexy," but that's not really the way I saw it. Sure, the second is closer-fitting, and open-backed, but when I wore it, the feeling I had wasn't "sexy." (It wasn't "unsexy," either, of course.) It was "bridal." I could see myself walking down the aisle in that dress. I smiled a lot when I put it on. And when I imagined myself walking down the aisle in that dress, the image in my mind was of Ben waiting at the altar, not of the dress itself. It was a dress that I loved, that looked awesome, and that knew its proper place, being amazing while simultaneously getting out of the way to let me focus on what really mattered - my groom. The only thing that prevented me from choosing was that I was weighing the dress I loved against the dress everyone else loved. Once I realized that, the decision was easy. I picked the dress I loved.

Pictures after the break! (Dear Ben, Don't click this link. For real this time. Love, Kathleen)

Wedding Dress Wednesday: Part I

I bought a wedding dress. And then . . . I bought another wedding dress. I'm still trying to come to terms with being the kind of girl who buys two wedding dresses. I'm not entirely sure what kind of girl that is, but I doubt the words used to describe her are complimentary. Fickle, materialistic, and extravagant are a couple that come to mind. But with each dress, buying it seemed like the only reasonable thing to do at the time.

On July 30, I went to the Running of the Brides at Filene's Basement, with two friends, Jessie and Maggie. I did not go to the crazy running/throwing elbows/stealing dresses out of the hands of other women portion of the day, but after going to work in the morning, I took the afternoon off and headed over to Friendship Heights. I probably tried on close to two dozen dresses. Lots of them were exactly the type of dress that I'd had in mind: sleeved and lacy. All of those looked awful. Many were accompanied by beading of the variety that made Jessie remark that they looked like they'd been Bedazzled by a kindergartener. In short, it seemed that the only sleeved dresses they had were quite dated, and had likely been making periodic appearances at these sales since their heyday in the early '90s. Someone picked up a dress that looked nothing like what I'd been picturing myself wearing. It was strapless, beaded (though tastefully), and a color close to champagne. But it was beautiful, and when I tried it on (it fit almost perfectly), it was incredibly flattering, and strangers stopped to tell me how great it looked. And since the price was right ($249), I bought it. At a sale like the Running of the Brides, there's no thinking about it and coming back for it another day. It was now or never, take it or leave it, and I could not leave behind a dress that was so pretty and looked so good.

I'm not sure I would have taken such a dramatic step away from the image I'd had of myself had the dress been more expensive, but at $250, I felt like it was too good to pass up, and it wasn't a huge sum of money if, in fact, I ended up returning to the dress I'd imagined. (This from a girl who regularly carries groceries home in the palms of her bare hands to avoid paying DC's $.05 plastic bag tax, which just goes to show you how much weddings skew your perceptions.)

Almost immediately, I began to have the niggling feeling that I was talking myself into this dress. Part of me was disappointed that I'd "caved" to the prevailing trend of the strapless dress, a feeling I couldn't shake, no matter how many times I firmly told myself that not doing something just because everyone else is doing it is just as silly as doing something just because everyone else is. My mom said things like "If you love it, then I love it," which is not exactly a glowing endorsement. And then there was the feeling that I would not have ever shared with anyone, had I not eventually gotten a different dress: the feeling that, when walking down the aisle, I'd be overwhelmingly disappointed in what I was wearing.

But . . . it was just so pretty! There was no denying that it was a gorgeous dress. There was no good reason not to wear it, and the good reasons to wear it were not limited to its pragmatic attributes - like the fact that I already owned it. No, my (admittedly limited) aesthetic sense continued to tell me that it was a beautiful dress, and that I, or any other girl, would be lucky to be married in it. (Which is undoubtedly true.) My sentimental side, though, just kept saying, "But . . ." And "but" was all it took for me to decide to try on some more dresses this weekend, which you will soon read about in another post.

And after the break, I'll post pictures of me in the first dress. I'm hiding it behind a page break because I haven't the foggiest idea whether or not it's ok for Ben to see a picture of me in a wedding dress that is not the dress I'm wearing to my wedding.

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Searching for "The One"

While at home this weekend, I tried on my aunts' wedding dress. (Yes, that's appropriate pluralization; more than one of my aunts wore this dress.) I liked it a lot. My mom expressed reservations about whether the cut flattered my figure, and I could see her point. Do I love the lace at the neck enough to make up for the fact that the skirt makes me look a  little thick about the middle? (Sometimes I think I do. From the waist up, this dress is everything I want in a wedding dress.) Besides, Mom said, "when you watch Say Yes to the Dress, they say that when you put on "the" dress, you and your loved ones just know, and it overwhelms you. I don't get that from this dress." I told her that was all propaganda. You can't take your dress-buying (or dress-borrowing, as it may be) cues from a show designed around the wedding dress industry.

For generations, didn't people get married in their mothers', sisters', aunts', or cousins' dresses? Or in pretty dresses they already owned, or in dresses they could afford? Back when getting married was simpler, women got married just fine without searching for "the" dress.

Or did they?

Over the course of the weekend, I heard stories from relatives who got married 15, 25, or 50 years ago, and they each had stories - though not in so many words - of looking for and finding "the" dress.

An aunt, who got married in the late '90s said that she went to one dress store, and tried on 3 dresses. The first two had been suggested by the saleslady, though she liked a different one. When she tried that one on, she loved it and she bought it.

My mom, who got married in 1982, said that she had liked the look of her aunt's wedding dress in pictures, asked to try it on, and knew as soon as she did that she didn't need to try on any more dresses.

My grandmother, who was married in the '50s, told me that she got her dress in a warehouse. Some friends from work had connections, so she was able to go to the warehouse to see dresses before they were distributed to stores. "As soon as I saw it, I liked it," she said. And that was the dress she got.

Now I'm torn. I really hadn't thought that I would try to find "the" dress. I would find a dress that I liked and that was flattering, knowing that there are probably hundreds of dresses out there that would fit the bill. I would not buy into the wedding dress industry-sponsored propaganda. I would not seek it far, seek it wide, seek it low and high. I would try on a couple dresses, pick the one I liked the best, and I would have a wedding dress. My wedding dress shopping would, ideally, hearken back to the simpler days of wedding planning. And now I learn that even in the simpler days of wedding planning (my grandparents' wedding didn't have RSVPs; they just planned to have enough food in case everyone they'd invited showed up) brides sought and found "the" wedding dress. Is my attempt to mirror days gone by actually a romanticized attempt to invent days that never were? What's a girl to do?

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Sterling by Augusta Jones

Yikes! I didn't realize just how much Wedding Dress Wednesday would be missed if I skipped it one time! Sorry! The weekend before last we had barbecues, and birthday parties, and more birthday parties - not to mention some gardening, and homework, and we went out to eat, and so even with a holiday weekend I was busier and more tired and had less time for browsing wedding dresses and blogging than I usually do. But, I'm back, and hoping to be able to blog about some of the other wedding planning we have going on.

Earlier this week, my mom and my sister send me a link to this dress, which I just love!

It's Sterling, by Augusta Jones. At first glance, I think it's gorgeous, although it's hard to formulate a coherent opinion when the website doesn't show the model standing. (Why, if you were trying to show your wedding dresses, would you not show the model standing?) I'm also not 100% sold on ivory. Does it look like you're trying to make a statement when you get married in something other than a white white? I don't want to unintentionally make a statement. (And yet, I kinda like the color . . .)

I do love the details, especially the lace and the scalloped pattern on the sleeves, which, it strikes me now, is very similar to the pattern on my grandmother's dress. (Dear Ben, Don't click that link. Love, Kathleen)

I think Mom and Anna have a pretty good idea of what I like in dresses! (or at least, in what I like in pictures of dresses. Maybe I should try one on one of these days?)

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Simplicity

Although I can't find the original source of this picture, I first saw it here. It's listed as a Jim Hjelm bridesmaid dress. While I think I'd tend towards a more "wedding-y" wedding dress, there's something incredibly appealing about how simple this is in all respects. It's a simple color, simple fabric, simple design, simple silhouette, etc. Wedding planning, and weddings themselves, are, I'm learning, anything but simple. So anything simple seems, well, nice. I like simple these days.

(PS. Expect big things in the comings days/weeks. I have pictures from our NY engagement party and news about receptions venues!)

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Philosophical Musings

No fancy pictures today. But I've been thinking about where wedding dresses fit into our wedding plans. I got some flack for suggesting that $1700 was too much to spend on a wedding dress. Let me try to explain why that is.

There are a lot of ways in which I conceive of our wedding day:


The beginning of an indissoluble union that will fundamentally and forever bind us together.

A solemn declaration of our love for each other.

The first day of the rest of our life.

The creation of a new family.

A giant party celebrating Life and Love.

The bringing together of our family and friends as part of our new family, part of the rest of our life.


Notice what's missing from that list? "Fashion show." Of course I want to look nice. But I've never been a fashionista, and so beyond that, I'm not sure how much time or effort should go into picking out what I'm going to wear on my wedding day. Wedding websites and books recommend allocating 10% of your wedding budget to your dress. That seems nuts. My clothes are not 10% of the experience of my wedding. Going to David's Bridal and spending $300-$500 on a dress seems much more in line with the proper place that a dress should hold in the grander scheme of the wedding. 1-2% of the budget, 1-2% of my time and effort, 1-2% of the wedding experience.


(Note: There is every possibility that I will be eating my words when I find a gorgeous, expensive wedding dress that I just fall in love with. Don't judge.)

Wedding Dress Wednesday - My Grandmother's Wedding Dress

When I was at home last weekend, I tried on my very first wedding dress, the dress my grandmother wore when she married my grandfather in the 1950s. It's satin with lace, and it was worn by both Grandma and, in the 1980s, my aunt Linda. (The lace isn't original, but was replaced when Linda wore it, and is so yellowed that it would have to be replaced again if I were to wear it.)

I'm going to keep shopping around, doing some of my shopping in relatives' closets and some of it in bridal boutiques. But here's dress #1.

Ben, the rest of this post is not for your eyes.

It's About the Marriage, Not the Wedding

From the very beginning of our engagement, Ben and I talked about wanting the phrase "It's about the marriage, not the wedding" to guide our wedding planning efforts and give us perspective. We don't really need infusions of perspectives yet; we're incredibly excited both to get married and to be married. From what I hear, though, it's easy to lose perspective and get bogged down in the wedding-planning details.

Maybe because it's so relevant to my life right now, this struck me as one of the most touching PostSecrets I've ever read.

This is the front and back of a postcard that was posted on PostSecret this past weekend. The front reads "I work at a bridal salon. I pray for strangers' marriages while I steam their gowns." The reverse reads "I wish people would spend as much time on their marriages as they spend on their weddings."

I'd love to have the writer praying for our marriage while she steamed my dress.

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Another Look at Color

Some of you may be aware that I've always been partial to the color green. And by "partial to," I mean "addicted to." Sometimes I have to force myself not to buy things that are green, because so many of the things I already have are green. So, as I spent Tuesday home from work with a stiff neck, I enjoyed experimenting with the dresses on the David's Bridal website that have accents in any of a couple dozen different colors.

(David's Bridal)

This dress is pretty, although I'm not sure I love the "pick-ups" on the skirt, which can better be seen if you visit the website here: Satin Pick-Up Gown. Once you get there, play around with the different colors that the sash can come in; I'm fond of both Kelly and Clover, which are the two (almost indistinguishable, at least online) shades of green that show up in the top row of the color choices.

Which one is your favorite color?

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Kendra

(mybigfatbeautifulwedding.com)

This afternoon, looking for some fresh Wedding Dress Wednesday inspiration, I googled "lace wedding dress." (Ok, maybe not so fresh - after all, 99% of the dresses I've posted so far have lace.)

One of the results on the first page was for mybigfatbeautifulwedding.com, the website for a bridal shop that sells custom wedding gowns at reasonable (actually: really cheap) prices. While they may need a professional to redesign their website, and ordering a custom gown from someone whose work I couldn't see in person, in advance, is not high on the list of things I want to do, I found a couple of dresses that I think are just gorgeous.

The Kendra, above, is one of them. I think I've got a lace problem, because how I feel about a dress is directly proportionate to how much lace it has. (See: Dalmacia, Mia Solano, Ivanka Trump) This dress is beautiful. It's described on the website as "Beautiful Strapless Styling With Sequin Encrusted Lace Overlay Bodice. Slimming Dropped Waist with slight A-line silhouette. Fitted Styling With Slimming Princess Seams On Bodice. Gorgeous All Over Ancelon Lace Over Lay. Lovely Train." (It's the eternal italics and overuse of capital letters that really make me think they need to redesign their website.)

The front:

Detail:

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Ivanka Trump's Wedding Dress

Ivanka Trump's wedding dress has gotten a lot of attention. I think it's well-deserved, but I also think it's amusing just how revolutionary a wedding dress with sleeves is these days.

(Getty Images)

According to Cathy Horyn of the NY Times, the dress, by Vera Wang, was inspired by Grace Kelly's wedding dress. Ivanka insisted on the sleeves and high neckline as a result of having converting to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner. (The implication, of course, being that if she had remained Catholic, there would have been no reason at all to be covered during a wedding ceremony.)

I love that this dress doesn't just happen to have sleeves; it was intentionally designed with modesty in mind, and what was the result? Classic - and classy - beauty.

I love designer Vera Wang's take on it: "She was actually very much about being covered and I seized on the chance to do a dress that wasn't naked and very Hollywood."

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Couture D'amour

(Mary's Bridal)

What do you think of this dress? I'm not a fan of the huge train (which isn't quite so evident here as it is on the website). Hmm, I suppose I should be learning about train lengths . . . is that cathedral length? Semi-cathedral? Anyway, it's too long for me, I think. I really like the body, especially the neckline (I think that's a sweetheart neckline?) The sleeves are pretty from this angle, but they are actually kind of bell-shaped at the bottom, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I do love the intricate beading and lace all over, though.

Opinions?

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Mia Solano M1054Z

When I started looking for pictures of dresses with sleeves, I was mostly looking for dresses with long, sheer, lacy sleeves, because I think they're pretty. Besides, most of the other besleeved options came from places like LatterDayBride.com, which, though it has some quite pretty dresses, has many dresses that look like someone put a T-shirt on over her wedding gown. Almost uniformly, the short-sleeved dresses I saw were like most of those at LatterDayBride, and had T-shirt style necklines and sleeves. I was thus pretty sure that short sleeves were not for me.

Until I came across this dress by Mia Solano.

(MiaSolano.com)

I can't even tell you why I love it, but I do. Unfortunately, you can't zoom on the Mia Solano website, so it's hard to see the lace pattern in detail, but I think it may be the texture of the dress that I find particularly attractive. I'm also fond of what the website calls the "rouched Satin band at the waist." (Note: I'm not sure rouching is what I though it was?)

What do you think of this short-sleeved dress?

Wedding Dress Wednesday - A Little Splash of Color

I know I just said I don't want a strapless dress. But I keep coming back to the David's Bridal website to look at this dress:

(David's Bridal)

I'm generally fairly traditional, so it had never occurred to me to get married in anything but all white. But there's just something about this dress and the way the accented details pop that I can't help but love.

What do you think? Is getting married in a dress with color too far out there?

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Dalmacia by Pronovias

For the first several weeks of our engagement, I was so busy that the closest I got to planning or even thinking about weddings was furtively sneaking peeks at wedding dresses online while I was supposed to be studying. As a result, I've already developed something of a collection of links to and pictures of wedding dresses online, which I'll share with you in a feature I'm calling "Wedding Dress Wednesday." (I worry the attempt at alliteration is going to backfire if I ever want to start another weekly feature, considering that "Wedding anything" is going to require the use of a Wednesday for alliteration . . . but so be it.)

I adore this dress. I love it, I love it, I love it. I haven't been able to find the original image source, but it seems it from the 2008 Pronovias St. Patrick line. It's being discontinued almost immediately, I've heard, and while we're not far enough along to have set ourselves a budget for things like dresses, the $1,700 price I saw is really just far more than I think I'd be comfortable paying for *1* piece of clothing that I will wear *1* time on *1* day. It would seem unconscionable. There are starving children in Africa, after all.

But that doesn't mean we can't at least talk about the dress, right? I love the lace. I love the sleeves. I love the lace sleeves. I'd love to get married in a dress with sleeves - I've always been partial to lace sleeves - and they're a bit hard to find. I was worried that if I insisted on sleeves, I'd end up looking frumpy or old-fashioned. I may want sleeves, but I don't want to compromise. This was the first dress I found that really proved that "sleeved" and "frumpy" can be downright antithetical at times. So though it's out of reach, I keep coming back to it and drooling a bit.