Wedding Dress Shopping

Hi guys, first things first, an apology is in order! There has been a ridiculous amount of time between blog posts, mainly because instead of writing about my life, I’ve been super busy trying to get it in order! I didn’t want to write about it because I didn’t want to jinx it, and it could still fall through, but one of the main things that’s been keeping both myself and Anthony crazy busy has been that we’re in the process of buying a flat. It's still small and modest, but it's a lot bigger than where we are now, and most importantly, it will be 100% ours to do what we want with (not that much needs doing!). We’re both super excited and also still keeping everything crossed that it doesn’t fall through, but we are at the stage where we’ve done all we can, and it's out of our hands now.

We also go to Disneyland Paris in less than two weeks (eek!) so have been trying to plan for that, but alongside both having full time jobs, buying a flat, helping Dad move into his new house, wedding planning, and general housework, it's been a mad time! So that gives you an idea of what we’ve been up to in the last couple of months, and now let’s move to the point of the blog. I can't really remember where we were in terms of wedding planning in my last blog, but we’ve got a lot more sorted recently; we’ve booked transport, we’ve booked the florist, we’ve found the most BEAUTIFUL bridesmaid dresses I have ever seen, and most importantly… I have a wedding dress!

So before you go desperately scrolling through this post to find photos, there will be no photos on this blog at all, not even the reject dresses! I will be writing a blog with loads of photos of me in an array of dresses, but for very obvious reasons, that will not be uploaded until after the wedding, so I’m sorry but you’ve got to wait at least 8 months for that one! This post will mainly be me talking about the experience of dress shopping, as well as talking about the shops we went to, but the actual mention of dresses will probably be pretty scarce!

So how was dress shopping? Well the whole experience was amazing, but actually really hard to describe; I feel like all the wedding planning we’ve done so far could almost be for someone else’s wedding, but when you look at yourself in a wedding dress, there’s no denying that this is all for you! I think I felt a bit numb for a lot of the day, because it just didn’t feel real. You spend your whole life dreaming of the moment you wear a wedding dress, and then to see yourself in one is so overwhelming!

I would advise people not to read up too much on what to expect before you go – the only thing you need to consider before you get there is are you wearing decent underwear, because you spend most the day basically naked in front of strangers! But I’d read in so many different articles and magazines to shop around, and try everything, which I did. However this led me to being uber critical about every dress. You also hear that when you find “the one”, you’ll know straight away. What I'm about to say is going to sound bad, but I didn’t get that “the one” moment when I put my dress on. Not because my dress isn’t perfect – it definitely is, and I love it SO much! But I was overthinking EVERYTHING. It also didn’t help that my dress was in a sample size 8, so didn’t even do up; because of that it was quite hard to imagine how it’ll look when it fits (but the more time that passes, the more I know it's going to look amazing – I actually miss it, I want to see it again!). I was looking for faults in every aspect of every dress, and even though I couldn’t find anything that I didn’t like about my dress, I still wasn’t convinced. Looking back, I think this was denial. I was so in shock about it, and the fact that I might have just found my wedding dress… it just felt really surreal.

I tried on more dresses after finding “the one”, and this I think was when I started to realise that nothing compared to that dress – and my dress didn’t even look amazing on me at that time because it didn’t fit! It was trying on more dresses that made that “this is the one” moment start to kick in, and as I said earlier, I am now 100% sure that it is “the one”. But all I would say to future brides is don’t be disheartened if you don’t fall in love with it straight away! It doesn’t mean that it isn’t “the one”, and the more dresses that you put on after it, the more you’ll realise how right it was; you’ll want to kick yourself that you didn’t realise straight away!

I would still personally recommend going to at least 3 dress shops; each of the ones I went to was a totally different experience, each as amazing as the last but in a totally different way! For anyone who is interested, I went to Heritage Brides in Hatfield (it’s in a converted barn and was by far the most beautiful dress shop I have ever seen!), The Wedding Gallery in St Albans, and Dress in Love in Hertford. I would wholeheartedly recommend each one of them, they were all so welcoming, so helpful, and so friendly! As well as being really professional; each of them seemed to know my personal style before even I did! And for those of you who want to be super nosy (like I would be!)… The Wedding Gallery was my favourite shop, as that is not only where I found my dress, but we also found incredible bridesmaid dresses there, and cannot fault the service or the experience they gave me. I feel slightly overwhelmed whenever I think about the time I had there, because it was just so amazing.

I feel like I’ve written all I can about the whole experience, but my main point is to reassure people that you won’t necessarily know straight away, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! I'm falling more in love with my dress every day, and it's such an amazing feeling.

I don’t know when my next blog post will be, or what it will be about, but for now (even though I said no photos) I'm gonna leave you with a little treat… this is the face of someone seeing themselves in a wedding dress for the first time! (Disclaimer – this is not my dress! Simply the first one I tried on).

See you soon!

x