PROGRESS!!!!

My fiance keeps telling me that I'm going to be ready for this wedding in May, and he just doesn't understand why I'm working on things when we have such a long time. Well, it's because I want to, and rather than the two of us sitting around doing research, I just want to do the research and then be able to give him the information so we can make a decision together.

So far, we have actually made progress... now that all of my bridesmaids have their formal invitation to be a part of their wedding, I can talk about my latest and greatest wedding planning success. After a few hours of wedding dress shopping (this topic will be covered at a later date) we switched gears and started looking at bridesmaids' dresses.

WOW... I had no idea that there were so many UGLY dresses out there. Who are these people who choose these ugly dresses for their bridesmaids so that they look better? Seriously... these girls are going to be in your pictures forever... I would think you would want them to look good!

Here was my list of requirements for my bridesmaids' dresses:
1. Looks good and FEELS good on everyone (this took strapless dresses out of the mix)
2. Something that is inexpensive (I was shooting for under $150)
3. Something that was fun and summery (knee length-ish)


So during our dress shopping, we mostly found things like this:

Yes... I know...

There are no words...

So, one of the girls and I went to the mall to do some non-wedding shopping and ended up checking at Macy's to see what they had in their dresses that could be used as bridesmaid dresses. Their selection was pretty disappointing, and none of the dresses hit that "inexpensive" requirement. We went over to Dillards, just to look and WOW!!!

First of all, I never knew there was such good stuff in Dillards, and I never thought I would find bridesmaid dresses there. We actually found three different dresses that we liked, and we were fortunate enough to have a great sales associate named Sarah who spent about an hour and a half with us and was SUPER helpful!!!

So... here it is...

It's royal purple (even though it looks kind of blue here) and yes... those are pockets. It looks really cute on everyone, no matter what their body shape is (and believe me... I have a BUNCH of different shapes amongst my bridesmaids) and it is so cute!

Let's talk about the most exciting part... the part that is going to get me an award. These dresses cost $45 each... yes... $45. I guess if you want to get technical, they are $48 with tax, but like I said... this is getting me an award, "Cheapest bridesmaid dresses IN THE WORLD"!

So, I bought out the store (in misses and petites) and the fantastic Sarah looked around the metroplex and figured out where we could get more!

I think I ended up buying a total of 15 of these and I mailed them to the out of town girls and so far, they work for everyone!!!! Now the only thing we need to figure out is shoes. I think I'm going to go with an ivory shoe, and everyone can just get whatever ivory shoes they want. We tried silver and it didn't look as good as we though, and I know that I'm going to get an ivory dress so that will tie things together (plus the dress looks super cute with pearls).

OTHER PROGRESS:

We have narrowed the photographers down to 4, who we will interview in April when we go up to Indiana to plan.

We have also narrowed the reception options down to 9. Yes, I know that doesn't sound like it's been narrowed down, but we had almost twice that many on my research list. So, we will have to visit those as well... it's going to be a very busy 5 days!

As of last Thursday, we have been engaged for 3 weeks, so I'm pretty happy with our progress so far!