Extreme Dress Shopping

This is a blog post that I should have written months ago when it events were still fresh, raw, nerves still on the edge. How's that for suspense building? It's a story worth writing and this way I can look back on our 10, 20, 30 year anniversaries and laugh. Although, I'm sure my sister, our chauffeur for the day, isn't too ready to laugh at the experience quiet yet.

In September when we got engaged I started to look at wedding dresses online, looking at the wedding blogs, oooing and ahhhing over the bridal magazines (which Mark and subscribed me to long before we were engaged), and even watched the numerous wedding shows on TV.

I knew what kind of wedding I was going to have, I just didn't know what kind of dress I wanted. I knew what I liked visually but I wasn't sure what kind of dress was an Emily dress. I got to the point in November when I had enough looking and I was ready to start shopping! My MoH helped speed up the process by getting pregnant, we were going to need to order the bridesmaids dresses before she started showing, and we couldn't look at bridesmaids dresses before we found the wedding dress.

I made two appointments for a weekend in December that worked with everyone's schedule. The Wedding Shoppe on Grand Ave in St. Paul on Saturday and The Wedding Chapel in Crystal on Sunday. Apparently my scheduling didn't work well with Mother Nature, she had different ideas for that weekend in December.

Friday night it started to snow. Not just a normal, this is Minnesota snow, it was REALLY snowing. Did we cancel the appointments and stay home and stay warm and cozy? Nope! We were tough northern Minnesota girls, we aren't going to let a little snow get in our way of finding my wedding dress!

My sister, Mom and I left extra early on Saturday morning. I even called the store to see if they were open. Yes, they were open and the store lot was being plowed as we spoke. Perfect! Parking on Grand Ave in St. Paul can be tricky without the snow, thank god they had a parking lot. Even with the snow we arrived on time and my MoH was already there and had us checked in, my other sister (and third bridesmaid) arrived a short time later. The shop was unusually slow because of the weather so we had free reign to pull dresses for me to try on. The selection was kind of overwhelming, I wanted to try all of it on, so I just let everyone else do the picking.

We spent a good couple of hours trying on dresses, all the while it kept snowing outside. We were able to quickly rule out certain kinds of dresses. When I was looking at dresses I was drawn to the romantic look of lace dresses, kind of like this one (I didn't try on this particular dress, just ones like it): I think I liked the look of the lace details on the straps and the way the dress went into a v at the neckline and in the back.

They were pretty, but just not an Emily dress and definitely not a New Years Eve dress.

Then we found this dress:

For 24 hours I thought this was my wedding dress. It had bling, but not too much bling. The top hugged my figure but hid my flaws, the massive skirt added some drama, I loved the way the back laced up. My favorite part of this dress though was the bubble hem at the bottom.

We determined that we would keep our appointment for Sunday (my future mother in law was coming to the Sunday appointment) and see if we could top this dress. If we couldn't I was gong to come back Monday morning and purchase it right off the rack. (It was even my size, how perfect was that?!?) We headed downstairs to try on some bridesmaids dresses. Keeping the above dress in mind we picked out a dress that we thought would work, took down the style number and headed back upstairs to survey the weather.

By this time how long had gone by? 3 hours? Maybe almost 4? The snow had really started to pile up. We just stood at the front door and stared out at the street. My MoH's car was completely covered in snow by the plows. She hadn't realized there was a parking lot and had parked on the street.

Here is where I was going to insert photo of her buried car but I can't for the life of me find it!

We were tough Minnesota girls, we could dig her out! Or pay the nice young man with a snow blower $20 to plow her out. Minnesota girls are resourceful! We did have to finish shoveling her out afterall, his boss wasn't too happy that he was helping us and not clearing the sidewalks he was hired to do. Once we got her moving, we crawled through the streets of St. Paul to drop her car off at a city ramp so she didn't have to drive to my sisters where we were going to all crash for the night. We made it to the ramp and once we turned out of the ramp, we get stuck. Let me describe the scene. Downtown St. Paul, blizzard, not many cars moving in the streets, probably at least 12 inches of snow in the street and not a plow in sight.

Here is where we spend who knows how long shoveling and kicking the snow away from the van tires so we can make it the half a block to the light where we can turn down a slightly more traveled street and pray we don't get stuck. We slowly make our way through St. Paul, past many stuck vehicles, city busses and police cars. Once we got to the freeway it was more of the same scene and a slooooow ride back to my sisters house. Lots of stuck cars on the exit ramps, and cars would just stop in their tracks under the overpasses to clear their windshields of snow and ice (once you were in someones tracks you didn't dare move over in the fear of getting stuck in the 12 inches of snow that was acumulating on the freeway). What should have taken 30-45 minutes probably took closer to hour and a half? Maybe two hours?

In the time that we were gone my Dad and brother in law had to go out and shovel multiple times to keep up with the snow.

Downtown St. Paul got 23 inches of snow that day. Twenty three!

We all made it to our destinations in one piece that day. Nerves a little frayed and we probably needed a stiff warm drink but we were safe. I hoped that it would stop snowing so we could make it to our dress appointment in Crystal on Sunday.

Thankfully the weather cleared up and it quit snowing. Sunday was bitterly cold, but it had quit snowing. My sister, Mom, MoH and I made the appointment on Sunday and I'm glad we did! (My other sister and future mother in law sat Sunday out, I couldn't blame them.)

The mission on Sunday was to top the dress we found on Saturday. After sleeping on it Saturday night I thought maybe the dress I picked out on Saturday was a little to big for our venue. It would possibly be a tight fit for me to navigate down the isle at the ceremony and around the guest tables at the reception. I still loved the dress, but was ready to see if we could find something to top it.

And we did! I don't want to say too much about the dress. Mark has no idea what it looks like, and he's staying away from the closet that I have it hiding in. I'll just say that it has almost everything that we loved about dress number 1 but it has a completely different vibe to it.

I can't wait to wear my dress on New Years Eve! It's fun, its flirty, it is most defiantly an Emily dress!

BIG thanks to my family and MoH for braving the weather to help find my wedding dress!!!