ordered a wedding dress + shoes

Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to post pictures of my wedding dress. I am, however, going to tell you all about the process of picking the perfect dress for me.

I’m not one of those girls who spent most of her childhood thinking about her wedding, and I never, until I got engaged, made a board on Pinterest about weddings. (Now I pin to my heart’s content on my wedding board.)

So when it was time to think about a wedding dress, I really had no idea where to begin. I had heard about a collection of dresses called the Disney Princess Wedding Collection, and so I decided to look into those first, since I love all things Disney.

Side note: there are engagement rings floating around on the internet called Disney Princess Engagement Rings. These are not actually real, as Matt said he looked into getting one for me. Oh, well!

Anyway, the Snow White gown caught my eye out of all the others from the collection. I found a store near me that carried the Disney Princess bridal gowns, and went to try it on.

It just…didn’t work. I don’t know what it was, but it just seemed like the dress was wearing me, and I wasn’t wearing the dress. I was a little disappointed, but I decided to try on a bunch of other dresses in varying styles and designs to see what I would like the best.

There was one style that I kept being drawn to (pictured above - keep in mind that this dress is at least four sizes too big for me), but since this was early in the year and way too soon to purchase a dress, I used that style as a reference and booked an appointment at a boutique in Raleigh called Maggi Bridal a couple months later.

Maggi Bridal is unique in that it only books one dress appointment at a time, so that you are the only person in the shop while trying on dresses. The girl that I worked with was friendly, patient, helpful, and very mindful of my budget, which helped a ton in picking the perfect dress for me.

After discussing the different styles that I liked, she helped me pick out a few gowns to try on. I wound up picking the first dress that I tried on, that went completely against what I had originally told her, ha! Though I’ve heard that’s the way it usually goes with wedding dresses.

I spend more times that I would like to admit looking at pictures of myself in the dress on my iPhone. I can’t wait to wear it!

Going along with that, I’m still in the process of picking wedding accessories (are there any cute bridal panties that AREN’T sheer?! I don’t want to show off all my bits to my bridesmaids!), but the shoes I decided on fairly quickly.

I knew that I wanted statement shoes, preferably in pink, since it would go along with the wedding colors but would also give me that pop of color that I wanted. I saw these shoes on Pinterest that were perfect, but being Valentinos, the price tag was not.

I dedicated one night searching around on the Internet for a similar shoe style. Every time I thought I found a shoe that was similar to the original that I loved so much, I would discover that it was in fact the same shoe! It seemed it was meant to be, and with a little coaxing from Matt, I took the plunge and invested in the Valentinos.

Missed a Wedding Wednesday post? Here’s our engagement story, choosing the colors, choosing the bridal party, and picking the venue.