Addressing the Dress: Narrowing the Search

I have mentioned the search for my dress in a past post, and I have talked about the crazy reasons for not wanting to reveal her identity on the world wide web. But that doesn't mean that I can't write about our dress buying adventures, does it?

As mentioned, my sister and I spent a lot of time narrowing down the search for dresses. After an extensive search in the Toronto area, we visited some boutiques in Kitchener and Waterloo. We were very pleasantly surprised by the amount of bridal salons that are found in these tiny cities just west of Toronto. The prices of the dresses were also significantly lower than what we were able to find elsewhere.

We knew that I'd never be able to pick a dress without my Mama present, so we made a mantle note to bring her back to the stores we visited. We returned to the area shortly before our trip to Poland this summer. My Mama was going to Poland with us, and she was planning on staying for a couple of months, so it was kind of crunch time. We visited our favourite of the Kitchener stores, and found the dress that we felt was "the one". It was a San Patrick gown that my mom swears was "made for me". We went to a couple of other stores, but found nothing that even compared to the San Patrick.

Upon returning to the original store and trying the dress on again, we were sold. But this isn't where the adventure ends. We also began to have a little bit of cold feet. The dress was on the expensive side of the dresses we were looking at and the standard length was too long (at my height, this is a surprise) and would need to be ordered in a custom length which was an extra fee. I asked the sales women to measure me so that they would have the information on file, and told them that we would sleep on it and call them in the morning. We didn't want to drive all the way back to Kitchener (about an hour's drive), but the staff assured us that we could put in the order over the phone.

When we got home, my Mama and I decided to visit just one more bridal salon. We had recently moved, and there was a bridal store just down the street. We walked in, and the sales lady put me in a beautiful, fit and flare, tulle gown. The dress fit me like a glove, and they were having a sample sale. I could have this dress for about 1/4th of the cost of my original pick. We asked the staff to put the dress on hold, and we went home with a big decision to make...

Did you pick a more expensive dream dress, or did you pick a stunning bargain dress?