The Dresses That Weren't

I've been transferring pictures to my new computer so I can organize them and eventually get them onto discs and an external hard drive. Looking through them has been so much fun! Erik always bugs me because I don't remember anything unless I have a picture of it. And it's true. As I look through the photos it is like I am living everything for the first time all over again. It is wonderful!!

Anyways I stumbled across some pictures from wedding dress shopping. I know it's a faux pas, but I bought my dress before we were actually engaged. Like, only two weeks before. We'd been talking about getting married since we had started dating, then more seriously at about 6 months, then most definitely at a year. It's was April and I decided that I wanted to get married at the end of summer because it was before school started, but gave me four months to still plan the wedding. I didn't want to wait an entire year. Being engaged for a year would have been awful because we still would have been long-distance and I hated that more than almost anything! So, we decided to get married at the end of summer, but we weren't officially engaged. Erik decided to start looking for a ring and I decided to call a bridal store to see how long it would take for a dress to come in. The nice lady on the phone told me I should have ordered it two months ago, but if I ordered one by that Friday it would come in a week before the hypothetical wedding date - August 30th.

So, I called my sister Lindsey up and asked her to be my maid-of-honor for my "unofficial" wedding and then asked her to come out to go wedding dress shopping with me. This was on like a Monday or something. She said of course and promptly booked a flight. I called my Dad up to tell him the wonderful news (we'd been talking to my parents about it for a while. Had some good discussion over a couple breakfasts and they knew it was coming). So, I told papa the good news and then asked him to send my mother out and telling her I had a surprise for her.

I called my sister, Shar, to see if I could get her to come out too, but she couldn't because she has four beautiful children who needed their mother. I didn't tell her I was getting married, just that I had a surprise for her. I probably should have told her because she would have been more likely to come, but she is a mama first and foremost so she made a good decision.

Lindsey came out on the Thursday. We went surprised my mom at the bus depot allowing her to believe that Lindsey was the surprise and that we were going to have a girls weekend in Kelowna. 

So we went the next morning and walked around downtown. We went for lunch and were strolling along when I said, "hey let's go into here (a bridal store) for fun." Mom was fair game so in we went. I told the lady I was getting married on August 30 and we started looking at dresses. My mom just assumed I lied so we could look around because she didn't think anything of it. I turned to my mom and said, "no really Mom. I'm getting married at the end of August".

Mom's reaction.

The lady who was assisting us looked at me with her jaw dropped to the floor. She could not believe I hadn't told my mom yet! Mom, Lindsey and I... well we were all crying in typical Jansen women fashion.

When I went in to try on one of the dresses the lady helping me was like, "you hadn't told your mom yet? I can't believe your mom didn't know!" over and over and over again. It was pretty cute.

To make a long story shorter we had one and a half days to shop. The first day we went to three stores and figured out what we like and the second day we went back to the first store and chose between my top three. I was by no means trying to find "the perfect dress". I didn't have that choice really, but I also didn't care that much. I obviously wanted a beautiful dress, but I had never even thought about my own wedding. I had no idea what I wanted! Well, I thought I wanted a simple dress with straps and a lace up back. My dress was none of these.

This was one of my possibilities. I loved this dress! It felt so good on. I liked that it was asymmetrical and the fabric was delightful. I ended up not choosing it because, as Lindsey said, "if you've got it, flaunt it". And this didn't really flaunt it.

This was the "bedazzler". It was Lindsey's favourite one. She loved the cinched bum. It was really difficult to choose between this dress and the one I ended up buying (at the time). It may have been that this one fit oddly (it was four sizes too big)...

And this is, of course, the dress that I wore to my wedding. The exact dress. We bought it off the rack. I think I eventually settled on this one because I liked it more for an outdoor wedding. It was elegant. It was cheaper. And it fit. I didn't have a "this is it" moment or a "feeling". It was just a good decision so I chose it. I wish it was more romantic than that, but it wasn't.

I didn't love it until my wedding day. And even then I was occasionally iffy. I think I even told my photographers that they didn't really need to focus on my dress. But I do love it. And I think it is absolutely beautiful. And I wish I could still squeeze into it... maybe next summer. That's one of the problems with a zipper: it's not as forgiving as a lace up back.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I got my wedding dress. Before my engagement. Hey, it worked for us.