Wedding dress

I picked up my wedding dress today. We just set the date a week ago, but I already have my dress. I ordered it in March. It was the first dress I tried on. It took me a total of seven minutes to find my perfect wedding dress.

Oh the horror of it, right? Only seven minutes? Girls wait their whole lives to pick out their wedding dress, it's supposed to take more than seven minutes. My mother expressed that very sentiment when she told me she was disappointed because her and my sisters were looking forward to the hours and hours and hours of bridal gown shopping. What I'm finding out is I'm not the stereotypical bride. I'm okay with that. And I think my fiance is okay with that. Hopefully our guests will be okay with that.

It's so funny though because for some reason people, mostly my family and soon to be in-laws seem to already have this idea that I'm going to be a typical bride. For instance my mother said, "Well, I guess I better start looking for some boring beige, stuffy, taffeta mother of the bride outfit." To which I took offense. I'm not even sure what the bridesmaids or the groom are wearing, I certainly don't have any rules for what my mother should wear. So I told her, wear whatever you want, I want you to have fun. Then a few months later I get the same thing from my future mother-in-law, Deila. She said, "Well I better call your mother and see what's she's wearing so we can coordinate. I know there's so much etiquette involved." I told her the same thing, wear what you want. I love her sense of flare anyway and I want her in a showy Deila outfit. An outfit with some character, some flare and some color. Just like her personality.

People need to understand our wedding is going to be fun and is about celebrating family and friendship and less about the ceremonial aspect. The dress and the tuxes and the church are more just a formality leading up to the celebration.

When I think about my dream wedding, I don't have a complete vision from start to finish. I never have. My eventual matrimony just wasn't what consumed my thoughts. I had better things to dream about - like being a race car driver. Not to mention that certain key pieces of the dream wedding puzzle were missing. How could I plan my dream wedding in my mind when I hadn't met my dream guy yet. So when I finally found that piece of the puzzle (Love you Colin) the rest has started to fall into place. Colin and I will create the perfect wedding together, instead of him having to fit into some prearranged template I dreamed up years ago.

After we got engaged I did start to envision what I wanted. Color scheme was the main aspect that I actually had some idea of what I wanted. We have a '53 Buick Skylark in a lovely shade of green called Pinehurst Green. I thought it would look good for the bridesmaid dresses. For some reason my girls weren't sold on the green. But I hadn't given up...until today. When picking up my dress, my sister Rachel (a bridesmaid, naturally) and my matron of honor Jaime were present, just to make sure we still liked my dress - which we did of course. Then we addressed the issue of the bridesmaid dresses. What did we go with? Well, not green. Instead Rachel found a cream dress with sections of black lace overlay. And four different styles. One for each girl. So, as you can see, if I'd already had my whole wedding planned, we couldn't have made such spontaneous decisions. Plus this way, if they don't like their dresses, it's their own fault. They picked them out.