A Productive Sunday

This past Sunday Samantha and I had a date to try on wedding dresses. We started the day by fueling for the task at hand by having brunch at Tilth in Wallingford. Tilth is an organic restaurant that I had been wanting to try and was near the bridal store. Samm and I each enjoyed our entrees (breakfast mac and cheese for her; croque monsieur with a fried egg for me), mimosas, and coffee. What was really cool was how the interior design matched our wedding colors.

Color Palette

It was nice to see that the colors did in fact work together in real life. You can see a photo of the interior of the restaurant in the photo gallery

After brunch we were still a little early for our 1:30 appointment so we stopped in at Paper Delights which was just across the street. It is a stationery store with a lot of cute greeting cards as well. I didn't really have too much time to go through their paper and cardstock but I did see one that matched the blue and green from our color palette. I think I have to make an appointment to go over their catalogs and get pricing.

Our next stop was "I Do Bridal" in Wallingford.

I Do Bridal

We arrived for our appointment and met with our dress consultant, Bridget. Bridget was awesome. She was very easy going and wasn't pushy. She made me feel real comfortable and made the process less intimidating. After putting our purses in the fitting room (man, no sneak attack camera phone pics!) she put us to work. She told us to start going through the racks of dresses and pick out any that might interest me. In the meantime she was also bringing dresses for me that I might like. Let me tell you, there are a LOT of ugly dresses out there. Some of them look like they got into a fight with the bedazzler and the bedazzler won. Sparkles are nice, but not when it seems like the dress is just a vehicle for sparkles.

After going through all the racks, I ended up with 10 dresses in the fitting room. Since I didn't really have a concrete idea of what style of dress I wanted I tried on different necklines, material, and silhouettes. Trying on dresses is an interesting process of finding out what works for your body type as well as your venue. I knew I didn't want anything too formal because Orcas Hotel has a casual vibe.

Since we weren't allowed to take pictures, Samm stepped up to the plate and took copious notes and sketched(!) the dresses I tried on. She wrote down all the terminology that Bridget was throwing at us. I'm so glad she did this because everything was starting to just blur together.

Samm's lovely sketches

After trying on all 10 dresses - some I disliked immediately and some I only liked certain elements - I did find one I liked. It is really simple and elegant. Bridget was right. I did surprise myself in regards to what dress I would like.

I'm glad I took everyone's advice and just tried on dresses. It gave me an idea of what I like in a dress and now I'm not as intimidated. I'm looking forward to trying on more dresses at different stores.

On our way out Samm and I even saw a potential MOH dress for her to wear. It matched the green from our color palette perfectly and it had pockets! We didn't have time for Samm to try it on so hopefully it looks just as cute on as it did on the mannequin.