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Our wedding plans went through several iterations before we settled on a destination wedding at San Francisco City Hall, which means that my dress ideas have also gone through several revisions.   

The Picnic Dress:   

At one point, we were planning a plain and simple picnic, and we were watching a lot of Mad Men, so I thought it would be fun to go for a retro sundress a la Betty.  I found an etsy dressmaker who sells 1950s style dresses, and ordered an ivory eyelet dress.   

The idea was to take this bandeau neckline dress style   

Bandeau Neckline dress from www.audreyandgrace.etsy.com

 

And make it out of a fancy eyelet.  The idea was to end up looking something like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, only more casual:   

Audrey Hepburn, Funny Face bride

 

But oh, holy mother.  Bandeau necklines and poofy skirts are not designed for curvy women.  Behold, the horror:   

Yikes.

 

I post this for several reasons (I’ll take a little bit of public humiliation for the greater good).  One, eyelet may look light and summery, but it’s a very heavy fabric.  Use sparingly.  Two, not all ivories are the same.  I was surprised to find that the off-white dress in my imagination was yellow (a horrid color on me) when I pulled it out of the box.  Three, 1950s style dresses make your butt 5 times its normal size.  Beware.  Four, if you have medium-to-large breasts, you will want a V-neck or sweetheart neckline.  Five, while etsy has its definite pluses (wait until you see the wrap I bought), it also has its minuses.  A custom dress is not something I will attempt over the internet ever again.   

The Vintage Suit   

The first time we “decided” on a San Francisco City Hall wedding, before I waffled and then went back to this idea, I decided to go for a vintage vibe, playing up the Marilyn Monroe-Joe DiMaggio thing, minus the spousal abuse and drug overdose, of course.   

To that end, I purchased a fab 1940s woman’s suit from Timeless Vixen Vintage, which has both a regular website and an etsy shop.   

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TimelessVixenVintage
http://timelessvixen.com/   

The quality of the garments sold by Timeless Vixen is really amazing, and she provides reliable measurements and tons of detail.  Although much of the vintage and antique clothing is too small for me, I check back regularly to see if she has anything new in my size.    

Here’s the suit I purchased:   

Vintage 1940s suit

 

It looked nice on, and will be even better with a few alterations (I’m planning to have the skirt shortened a tad and the sleeves made into 3/4 length, but keeping the cuffs).   

Me in the suit as-is

 

The only problem is that the suit is, well, brown.  And suit-y.  Since I work in an office every day, I look brown and suit-y all the time, so while it is a very well made suit, and attractive (and I am definitely going to wear it to work once I get it altered), it is not my wedding dress.   

Prom Dresses  

Tony and I have both had the big fancy white-dress weddings.  I kept my big poofy white dress in a box in my closet for my entire first marriage.  It was an ugly dress, worn once and stuffed in a closet.  One of my goals this time was to make sure that we’re not spending money on clothing that we will wear once.  As a general rule, I don’t wear white (who does, really?) so a white dress was out of the question.   

I started by looking at some of the prom dresses and mother-of-the-bride dresses that are coming out for this year’s prom season because they are lovely chiffon things with pretty prints, but none of the dress shops in our area had any of the dresses I was interested in, and I was not about to spend serious money on a non-returnable dress over the internet after the eyelet dress disaster.   

Here are a couple of my favorite mother-of-the-bride dresses (in theory; I never did find a store that carried any of these; the pictures are from www.tjformal.com.  I can’t vouch for TJ Formal, as I have never purchased anything through them):  

   

  

The Bridal Salon Experience For The Non-Ingenue   

I went to a couple of bridal salons to look at bridesmaid and mother of the bride dresses, having seen several online that looked passable.  But my bridal salon experience was extremely unpleasant.  The first salon tried a very hard sell of its dirty, dingy floor sample dress.  At the second salon, although I had made an appointment and told them exactly what I was looking for, the consultants were not remotely interested in helping me.  I failed on so many levels:  went in alone, without an entourage of cooing bridesmaids and mothers; asked to look at simple dresses without trains; and gave them a budget.  The first consultant stuck me in a room alone with a bunch of size 6 dresses and told me to hold them in front of me to see if I thought any would suit (I’m a size 10-12), as if I would pay money for a dress I hadn’t been able to try on based on the hunch that it might look half way passable if only they had a size that I could squeeze my fat ass into.  After I rejected these dresses, the first consultant fobbed me off to another, who looked at me and said “I hear you’re on a [and she leans in to WHISPER like it's "cancer" or something] budget?”   

At which point, I walked out of the store and over toward the hardware store where I had left Tony. We happily munched on popcorn and played with the power tools until I felt better.   

The Winning Non-Wedding Wedding Dress:  The Ready-to-Wear Cocktail Dress   

After grousing about my miserable experience at the bridal salons, I decided, “screw this!” and dragged Tony to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, and headed to Saks, where they are always polite and helpful.  I picked out a silk chiffon evening gown I loved (with a lot of help from the sales woman, who brought me different sizes and different styles until I found something I loved), got it pinned for alterations and went home to complain about the incredibly bad treatment given by bridal salons to those of us who are not pixie-sized brides with an unlimited daddy’s purse budget.   

Oh, and when I was paying for my dress at Saks, the clerk (not the same salesperson who helped me) asked me what the dress was for and I said, “My wedding,” she got very excited. “I love the nontraditional dresses for weddings!”  So here is the dress I picked in a different color on a skinny model:   

My dress in coral

 

And here I am taking a bad cell phone-in-the-dressing-room picture of myself the dress, before alterations:   

Pre-Alterations Dress

 

I had the dress shortened so that it is floor length with flats or ankle length with heels.  The seamstress also added darts to the bodice, tucked the V-neck together so that it is less revealing and shortened the straps to fit my arms better.  I now have many layers of dark blue-teal chiffon and satin to turn into ribbons, which I will use to tie around mason jars and favor boxes.   

Funny Story to Go With My Gorgeous Dress   

As I was standing in the alterations room wearing the dress, an older, and very loud, woman in the dressing room across the hall saw me.   

“Hey!” She said. “You’re getting that dress, too, only in blue! What are you wearing it for?”   

“A wedding,” I said.   

“Me too! I’m wearing it to my son’s wedding. Whose wedding is it?”   

“Mine,” I said.   

Another older woman who was with her stuck her whole face in the alterations room where I was standing and said(very loudly; they were a LOUD family), “BLUE? For a wedding?” The first lady hollored, “Why not?” The two young teenager-ish girls (bridesmaids in the wedding from the sounds of it), stuck their heads in the dressing room and gave me the weirdest look, as if they’re thinking “You’re wearing my mom’s dress for your wedding? Weird.”   

As I was checking out, the loud family was still standing around when Tony walked up to me.  The first lady looked at him.  He’d been sitting in the chairs outside of the dressing rooms while all of this was going on and asked him if he was going to be in the wedding, too. I think she might have thought he was my brother because we’re the same height and  both have brown hair and green eyes. So I introduced him as my fiance. She gasped: “You’re not supposed to see the dress!” To which Tony responded, “It’s okay. I’ve already seen everything.”   

I felt like Miranda  from Sex and the City picking out her wedding dress: “No white. I have a child. The jig is up.”