Reception Dress Search: Pt. 1

Back in June my dress came in. I loved her then and I love her now. Here is a reminder of my girl. What I didn't love? The tightness factor. Thus began my search for a short reception dress.

Miss Mary Jane on Weddingbee helped me in my search immensely (although I doubt she knows it.) This post helped not only her in her search for a short, white dress, but me as well. As my "short dresses" bookmarks grew I became increasingly discouraged. So. Many. Dresses. Plus, most were in my price range, so it's not like I could eliminate too many based on that.

Finally I decided I needed to take a break. There was no point in spending hours looking at short white dresses because they all started to look the same. So after a nearly 1-month sabbatical, I opened up all of my short dress bookmarks and began weeding out the ones I didn't love. Of course I *liked* all of them, but if I was going to buy another dress, I wanted to LOVE it.

Armed with my credit card and a good understanding of various return policies, I purchased 2 dresses. They arrived a few days later which was nice because I do not want to stress over this any longer than I have to. So without further ado, here are the dresses.

The first is from David's Bridal. Normally I would shudder at the idea of buying anything from there. I've heard too many horror stories, both from brides on the internet and girls I personally know. But they have an online dress collection that includes a good number of short dresses at extremely reasonable prices. This dress was only $139, well within my budget. Here it is on the model:

And here it is on me:


Huh...not really feeling it. It doesn't look half bad in this picture, but in real life it just doesn't work. Originally I liked it because the bubble hem mimicked the hem on my "big dress." But in the end it just wasn't right. It was tight under my boobs, something I knew would make me uncomfortable all night. No thanks!

The other dress is from Nordstrom. I love Nordstrom so much. We have one in Northeast Ohio but their formal dress selection is CRAP, so I just order dresses online and return them to the store if I don't like them. This dress was about $150, also well within budget. Here it is on the model:

And here it is on me:


Better but...I don't know. I thought I loved it when I first tried it on, and in this picture it looks pretty good, but I just don't think it's fancy enough. Our wedding is pretty formal and I think my reception dress should be more formal than this. If I were having an informal outside wedding, or a courthouse wedding, or maybe a beach wedding this dress would be perfect. But for the soiree we're throwing, it's just not right.

Stay tuned for Part 2 (which, much to my dismay, is not the conclusion.)