the dress the dress the dress!

this isn't it:

This was the dress I thought I wanted to get married in. Before I was engaged (but knew I was going to get married within a year or two) I fell in love with this dress from jcrew, but it was $1300, which was a lot more than I wanted to spend. I spent a lot of time online looking for a scoop neck, a-line dress that was under $500, and ended up finding something on target's website for $80. I figured it was worth a shot to order it, try it on, and pay a bit more to have alterations done so it looked more like the jcrew dress. When it came, I thought it fit perfectly, and for about 2 1/2 months I was convinced I could make the target dress into something I loved. But the past three weeks or so, I haven't wanted to go near the dress. I've been having nightmares about my wedding day and that dress, so I decided to go out with Mia and just see what else was possible for June 20. We went to Easton thinking there might be bridesmaids dresses at Nordstrom, parked nearby, and popped into BCBG Max Azria to see if there was anything worth trying on. There were only a few white dresses, none of them very interesting, except for this one...


and it was really beautiful and so much like some of the $5,000 dresses I was pining for...

vera wang collection- 12248

and there was only a size 8 in the store, but it was almost $400 which seemed like a lot. I tried it on, and really, really liked it. It was a bit big in the chest, but the length was perfect, it was light, and moved, and was so comfortable. We had them hold it, went to a few other stores, didn't see anything, and I decided it was definitely worth $400. I went back to buy it and for whatever reason, it rang up as only $250! I also bought an antique gold and rhinestone barrette that's beautiful and was on sale for $11.
So the past 24 hours I haven't been able to stop looking at it or thinking about how it's really, truly mine. I took it to a tailor a little bit ago to have it taken in a bit. It's probably good it will be out of the house for a while, otherwise I'd wear it out and get it dirty trying it on so often.

Progress

Well, I can't believe it's been a week since my last post. Time is just flying. One wedding "to do" that's been crossed off for a while was finding bridesmaids dresses. I wanted to find something affordable, flattering, summery, and something that could be worn again after the wedding. I look at the j. crew sale page pretty often, and love so many of their dresses. A note about j. crew sale items: there are patterns to their sales and promotions, usually a cycle between free shipping and 20% your total order. So I saw this dress, loved it, but it was $170. A few weeks later, this color was on sale for $99, fast forward a few more weeks, $69. I was worried that some sizes might sell out, so when there was free shipping I ordered dresses for everyone. When the dresses finally arrived, one of them was actually a yellow blazer instead of a yellow dress, so I went into the store to return it. By this time, the promotion had cycled to an additional 20% off, so while I was returning the blazer, I asked about a price adjustment, and they did it! All the dresses ended up costing about $55 a piece.

I'm also making progress on my plate collection. I had a great run to the Ohio Thrift on Cleveland Avenue and found about 10 dinner plates and 4 salad plates for $.20-$.60 apiece! I'm about to run to a few other locations- Ohio Thift is the only thift store I've found that have individually color-coded plates. FYI- the last Wednesday of every month everything in the store is 50% off!