Success!

This weekend was a frenzy of activity! Saturday was the dress shopping extravaganza. I had quite the crew assembled to help me find the dress, and we had a big day! My advisors consisted of three of my bridesmaids, Emily, Kati and Crystal (with Shauna weighing in via text message from NYC) and Katie, our wedding photographer. This large group ended up being a great help because they were really varied in their tastes. I knew if I found something that everyone liked that I would have a winner.
We started at a boutique in the morning where I tried on about 10 dresses...or maybe it was more, it felt like 1,000. We found several good contenders...some really simple, some really huge, and I definitely found myself liking things that I never would have imagined. One dress in particular was giant and really pretty awesome, but way too much dress for an outdoor ceremony. Those of you who know me well know that I really hate shopping, and I had just reached my limit and was starting to get frustrated when we ran out of time at the first appointment. We left there with three strong options, but none that I really felt like was "the one."
During the lunch break, we went to pick out my wedding band. I managed to find one that all five of us agreed on, so that was the obvious choice. After some mexican food for lunch, it was off to appointment number two. We started off with some really outside the box dresses that turned out just as I imagined...hideous. But they were good for a laugh.

Then we got to the good stuff. The next dress that I tried on just made me happy. As I showed it to the group someone made the comment "I haven't seen you this happy all day." And everyone loved it. Things were looking good, but I had three dresses left to try on. Unfortunately, I loved all three of them as well, so I had to try each of them on a few times. After all that, we settled back on the dress that made me happy. Hooray!

We were so efficient at finding the dress that we still had time left in the appointment to look at bridesmaid dresses. While I changed back into regular clothes, my shopping committee ransacked the racks of dresses. By the time I stepped out of the dressing room, they already had a pile of about ten options for me to look at! We narrowed them down to about 6, and then it was their turn to model while I sat and observed. After a variety of costume changes and having each of them model the various dresses, we had a winner there too. We flipped through the swatch book, picked a color, and before we knew it, we had not only found the wedding dress but the bridesmaid dresses too! That's a productive day! And then I was exhausted...I was asleep about ten minutes after I got home.

Today, Matt and I went and purchased my wedding band. It's actually in stock, so I'm supposed to pick it up tomorrow already! So I'll have to hang on to that for awhile before actually getting to wear it. And Matt officially has a full wedding party. Our friend Dan is going to be a groomsman!

Dan and Matt...apparently this phone call was too important to put on hold for the photo op.