Too Much Dress Shopping

I would just like to start by saying my hatred of invitations has dropped dramatically because my amazing sister and Maid of Honor volunteered to enter all the addresses into the labels for me, so I can simply print them out. Thanks Caroline :)

So I have not blogged in a couple of days because I've been insanely busy DRESS SHOPPING. On Tuesday I headed into Boston with my mom, Eric's mom and Caroline (my sis) for Operation: Buy a wedding dress AND bridesmaid dresses. It's no secret that shopping for a dress is not one of my favorite parts about wedding planning so I picked a place I knew had a lot of great stuff and was SET on buying a dress (or at least finding one I was set on buying, maybe not making the purchasing so quickly). While the trip was more successful than the others I have done so far- it still was not what I would call a success. I found one dress that my mom and Eric's mom really liked on me, but I was just not quite feeling it. I definitely liked it, but I wasn't SURE it was "the one" (I'm not really sure if I'm going to be a "the one" person anyway, but I'd like to be a little more sure). I came home and looked it up on the website and I'm not a huge fan of the model in the dress which is not adding to my love for it. If you are curious, the dress can be found here, and it's number 19 of 25. Hopefully Eric will not go through the hassle of looking at that, haha. My major problems with the dress are the straps are sort of wide on my shoulders, they fall on the outside more than in a normal spot. Also, as Caroline pointed out, the beading is a little strange, instead of normal circular beads, they are more the long rectangle shape that I'm not sure I like as much. Shockingly, the mermaid aspect does not bother me in this dress- normally I avoid it at all costs.

On the bridesmaid dress front, I did find a company (Watters) that makes the exact color fushia I want- bright and beautiful. I also found a dress that looked nice on Caroline but I'm not sure how large of a fan of it she is, and I don't know how great it would look on others. However, I am definitely going to continue to look at stores that sell Watters dresses so I can hopefully order in that exact color. It seems as though finding that color is definitely half the battle! So overall, I did not find a bridal gown or a bridesmaid dress. Which stinks, a lot. Plus, I had to go to the MALL on Tuesday night to find a dress for a wedding I am going to on Saturday. So basically I hated shopping by the end of the night on Tuesday.

In between all this ridiculousness, I did manage to squeeze in a bike ride with Caileen, my newest biking buddy! If you have been reading for awhile you know how bored and unmotivated I am biking alone. Ash is a wonderful biking buddy, but she lives in Chicago and Caroline is also a great biking buddy but will soon be back at school and not quite close enough to meet. My new biking buddy is Caileen! Caileen and I met in high school on the bus (haha, remember the bus?) and we became friends while playing hockey together. We lived down the street from each other, so I broke that ridiculous 6 month rule (can't drive friends around for 6 months after you get your license) about 300 times driving her to school and hockey practice. We blew tons of money on daily Starbucks runs, skipped hockey practice for Chilis and had way more fun before 6 am than most people do during the day. I have not seen Caileen in awhile so I was very excited to catch up over our new shared hobby. Caileen is one of those people who just gets me, she'll say something and I'm like YES I totally know what you mean. Plus she cracks me up. Here is a picture of us when I came to her house to watch her take pictures before her senior prom. This was 5 years ago....

Now I am officially down the Cape for my "vacation", which I put in quotes because today Eric and I are off to look at hotels for the wedding. But I'm looking on the bright side, at least I don't have to go to work. Yesterday when I was tutoring and one of my kids absolutely flipped out because he was winning a game and the game told him to go back 3 spaces (at which point he'd still be beating me by at least 15 spaces)- not working for over a week was definitely good enough for me!

And one more thing, my AWESOME wedding photographer is in the running for the Cape Cod A-List. If you guys liked my engagement pictures, please vote for her for best photographer. You need to follow this link and then vote for "Hike Photography." Just to remind you, she is responsible for THIS awesome pic: