Saying Yes to My Dress!

Looking back at the wedding planning, one of the funniest parts to me now is how everything snowballed so quickly. Our wedding literally started out as just our engagement party. My mom and aunt were planning it, and the tiny bit of decision-making I still had on my end was stressing me out more than all the big stuff. It felt like every small detail needed an answer, and I was overthinking everything. I finally asked if we could just turn the engagement party into the actual wedding, because the pressure of having “more time to plan” wasn’t helping, it was making me worse. So that’s what we did. We got engaged in June and married in August. Our engagement was literally two months and three days.

That also meant I only had a little over a month to find a dress. Originally I wanted a long sleeve lace dress. I told everyone that I did not want regular straps. It needed to either be sleeves, or strapless, or those off-the-shoulder sleeve/strap bands that go straight across your arms (I still don’t know what those are officially called), but anything but normal straps.

Mama and I went to a few bridal shops and I tried on everything that fit what I thought I wanted. And I actually did fall in love with a long sleeve lace dress. It was gorgeous. But with our wedding now in August (in the south) I just could not see myself wearing something long sleeved. I would’ve sweated through that dress in two minutes.

We ended up going to one more place, this time with Jake, and that’s where I found my dress. And of course, it was the total opposite of everything I said I wanted. It wasn’t long sleeved. It wasn’t strapless. But it was beautiful and it just felt right. Perfect for August. The top was beaded and sheer, and the bottom was ivory satin with an A-line silhouette. Simple, classic, and honestly even prettier to me than anything I had imagined before I actually started trying dresses on (and it had pockets!).

I don’t even know what moment sealed it for me. It wasn’t one big thing, it was just a feeling. It was that quiet little moment where you see yourself in the mirror and your brain goes, “This is the one.” And I have never regretted picking that dress, not for a single second.

It’s funny how the thing you swear you would never choose ends up being exactly what you were meant to have.