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{Real Bride: Emily} Two Bridal Salons, Ten(ish) Gowns, One Unexpected Dream Dress

Hello again, brides! I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking about the 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Trying On Wedding Dresses, and then I followed that up with ANOTHER 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Trying On Wedding Dresses, which was based on your fabulous responses to my original post. BUT it’s been a long time since I waxed poetic about my own personal wedding journey.

In my very first Real Bride post, I told you that we originally planned to bang my wedding planning out in 3 short months – and then shortly after we set a date, my fiance got a job in Reno, NV (on the other side of the country from where we were formerly located – Athens, GA). So shizz has been HECTIC, to say the least. Last week, I was planning a wedding and executing a cross-country road trip SIMULTANEOUSLY. It can be done, y’all, but I don’t recommend it. Thankfully, I’ve tackled most of the major wedding deets – catering, flowers, etc. And I’ll be gushing about all that in future posts – but today I wanted to tell you about my DRESS!

Behind this amorphous black blob, there's a surprisingly chic strapless gown!

I went to all of 2 wedding salons in Decatur, GA – where I’ll be getting married on February 18th – I took only my Mom, (who fortunately, had never watched a single episode of “Say Yes To The Dress”, and was blissfully unaware of what the salon experience would actually entail), and my BFF who I have known since I was 12, Katie. I had spent a lot of time earlier that week trying to narrow down where we would shop on our all-day bridal extravaganza, and had finally settled on 2-3 salons that were (completely coincidentally) also the closest to our wedding venue.

I really can’t stress enough how much sites like Yelp.com, and Wedding Wire helped me decide on these two bridal salons. If bridal salon reviews consistently lamented things like rude staffers, lack of options for plus size brides, or sky high prices, I was quick to axe that bridal salon off the list. I whittled my list of 5 down even further by calling salons on the phone and inquiring about things like sizes and pricing. My little wedding posse only ended up spending about 3-4 hours at 2 different salons that were two very different experiences.

The first was a traditional bridal salon, where dresses are pulled by an assistant, put on you by an assistant (who will use all manner of contraptions to make you look STUNNING). Then you’re trotted out into a fancy lounge area to be confronted by a giant mirror, crazy studio lighting, and more “OMG I’m a BRIDE!” moments than you can possibly stand. Or at least, that was my experience. I tried on 3 off-the-rack options at the first bridal salon – they were bedazzled, big strapless ballgown thingys. They were ALL gorgeous, and they all looked splendid on me – but they were all extremely HEAVY, opulent mofos – and they were not at all what I had in mind. Though I must say – in the moment, I was very tempted. And I did have one of those “OMG, I’m a BRIDE” moments, much to my chagrin.

Trying on those 3 dresses was physically exhausting – I couldn’t imagine staying in any of them for 6 hours. When I started feeling a little faint ( the corset I was wearing was 2 sizes too small for me, but still strangely effective), we made our excuses and got out of there. The customer service was AWESOME, and the prices were right, but I was getting disoriented and confused by gowns that looked AMAZING on me, but weren’t ME at all. On to our next appointment! Our next stop was The Bridal Outlet of Atlanta. This was an outlet in the traditional sense – there were a plethora of dresses to choose from, you grabbed what you wanted, and their fabulous assistants helped you into it. These gowns were a mix of sample sizes and overstocked gowns from their sister bridal salon, La Raine’s Bridal Boutique. They also had a small selection of NEW gowns they simply didn’t have room for at La Raine’s.

I tried on a wide range of dresses that were thankfully, much more to my taste. I had been pretty insistent on NOT getting something strapless, because as a plus size gal, I was worried about looking like I was exploding out of the top of my dress (We’ve all seen those brides. Yikes.) But again and again, strapless gowns simply looked best on me. Also – FYI, the ratio of strapless gowns to non-strapless gowns at any bridal salon right now is probably 10:1.

Finally, I had narrowed it down to two gowns – one romantic n’ flowy, slightly ethereal empire waist gown, and one slinky, ruched gown with a half-bow detail, a sweetheart neckline, and a nice dose of vintage va-va-voooooom. 

Wanna know which one I picked? TOO BAD. All will be revealed in good time, fellow brides…

ALSO, my wedding website speedometer thingy tells me that I have a mere 32 days left till my wedding. 32 DAYS.

- Emily