Relief and excitement

Maggie, Joe and I went to Maggie Flood today. They don't have the color swatches in that we ordered quite yet, but they were willing to talk "Dana's dream wedding gown." When it was all said and done, I picked out "fabric" and put down 50% of the total. It's done. Ordered. It's been living in my head for over 2 weeks now, so it's a relief to share the image with other people, especially since those other people will be creating the gown... I can't divulge details, bc Paul's being a stickler about not knowing anything about it until he sees it, but it's going to be a gorgeous dress. I can tell you that it's a different version (again, fabric) of a knockoff of a VW gown that Maggie Flood made apparently a few years ago, because it's nowhere to be found on the Internet or on the VW site. These women are amazing -- they just saw a picture and created this beautiful dress, which I tried on and proceeded to use to then dream up a "Dana special."

No details, but I can tell you it's white. ;-)

I can't thank Maggie and Joe enough for humoring me these last few weeks and going to "another dress store," as Joe keeps reminding us. I was hunting for a dream and the dresses I saw all fueled the creativity fires in my head. What I'll end up with won't only be a dream gown, but my specific dream gown -- literally; I've been dreaming about it. And the patience of Maggie and Joe (Maggie's patience totalled about 10 hours in this one task alone), not to mention Maggie's astute fashion sense in this area, allowed me to flit and flutter and then focus. Thank you!

Another day, another bridal shop

So I'm done with bridal shops. Maggie and I were bombarded by the same question ("When's your wedding?") about 7 times from 3 women today at Special Event Bridal Shop and when we said "September 1st," their only, repetitive comment was "Ohhh... that's soon!" People (my sister-in-law and my stepmom) have MUCH shorter engagements than even 5 months (which is what we're down to now), so I don't want to hear "Ohhh... that's soon!" from anyone. I'll pick out my dress in my own time, thank you very much, without the comments from the peanut gallery.

The shop, even though we had an appointment, was rushed and all I felt in the air was commerce. The owner wasn't all that friendly and only when we put our coats on to get out of Dodge did one of the women ask what we were looking for and pulled out a possibility from a rack (read: wall) of dresses that I hadn't seen. Where was she 20 minutes earlier? Anyway, I tried on the dress, which had a very nice element to it, but kept comparing things to the dress I saw (and have since "improved" in my own mind) at Maggie Flood's a few weeks ago. So it's back to them to see if I can alter the design to be "my perfect gown" and get the color swatches for the bridesmaids' dresses.

Maggie and I are off to David's tomorrow (we have an appointment set from our first visit there) to see if we can find dresses (or at least colors) for Liz and Leigha. Then, hopefully, they can pick out their own favorite styles in their local David's and voila! We'll have some bridesmaids' dresses. Maggie and I will get ours at Maggie Flood, I think.

The hierarchy of service at the three shops I went to:

1. Maggie Flood (they were WONDERFUL)
   
2. David's (believe it or not, the service we got there was pretty damn good)
   
3. Special Event (ah... not so much)

Maggie Flood

Maggie and I never made it to Special Event. As she zipped me into my 14th dress (or something like that) at Maggie Flood, I called Special Event and told them I'd have to reschedule.

Maggie Flood is great. The two women we met with (spend nearly 4 hours with) on Saturday afternoon are the ones who make all the dresses on-premise. They charge you a set amount, but that includes all the fittings and alterations. Basically, they build the dress you want. I tried on so many because I was looking for elements and then I'd be able to put it all together in whatever way I wanted.

I can't describe the dresses for obvious reasons on this blog, but I can say I found two there that I really liked and one got a much bigger reaction than the other one.

Maggie and I were both struck at how cool and how wonderful these two women were at Maggie Flood. We'd both love to do business there for our dresses for the wedding.

Just need to see a few more places to make sure I'm not missing out on anything. I'd hate for a rock to be unturned, as it were. And I have to reschedule that Special Event appointment, because I've also heard good things about them.

More dress shopping

David's was never going to be the end-all, be-all for the dress shopping. It is, however, a good place to look at several types of styles and materials and try things on so I know what types of dresses look good on me and what doesn't.

In that vein, Maggie and I are going tomorrow to look at Special Event Bridal Shoppe in Marlborough to see what they have. We have a 4:30 appointment. The hunt continues for both the wedding gown and the bridal party's dresses.