Dressing My Wobbly Bits

Shopping for a wedding dress when you’re a big girl sucks. Most dress boutique carry little to no dress in extended sizes and the dress they do carry seem to be identical copies of the same strapless modified A-line dress with ruching and if their fancy a sprinkle of beading. No offense to the brides with ruched, strapless, modified A dress. There’s a reason why these dress are so popular they fit and flatter everyone but this is not my idea of a dream gown.

Given the choice between dress shopping and a root canal I would choose a root canal every time. Fortunately the 1 one thing I fear more than dress shopping is walking down the aisle in my skivvies so as our wedding day grew closer though I knew that it was do or die time and I had face my fear and find a dress. After some research I was able to locate 2 bridal boutiques that carried samples in plus sizes. Both happened to be located in the orange county area within a few miles from each other so bridesmaid SD and I decided to make a day of it and hit up both.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures or dresses to share with you from our day out which goes to show you how underwhelmed I was with our shopping experience. While both Mon Amie Bridal and Ferndales bridal had a large selection of dress to choose from the dress themselves were either just ok or so far over my budget that it wouldn’t matter if it was in a size I could try on because there was no way I could afford it.

I also found myself getting slightly annoyed with the fact that the stores were set up in a way that the plus size gowns were segregated away from all of the “regular” dresses. This practice should have really surprised me though because isn’t this the same industry that has brought us such TV magic as Say Yes to the Dress Big Bliss because you know big girls can’t be featured shopping for dress amongst their petite counterparts.

I understand that separating the large dresses makes shopping the racks easier and more comfortable for some brides but for me having to walk through racks and racks of beautiful sample size gowns to reach the couple of racks of plus size dresses in the back of the store left me feeling more self-conscious than shopping amongst the so called “normal sized” brides ever would.

Needless to say I did not buy a dress that day and actually to this day I still don’t have one. After talking to my mom and detailing our day of shopping she asked why I hadn’t considering having my dress made. This was a total forehead slapping moment for me! My mom made my prom dress in High School, it fit perfectly and flattered me in a way that no dress in the stores ever did back then so why wouldn’t I go the same route for one the most memorable dress of my life? Decision made my mom and I will be working with a seamstress friend of hers to design and construct my wedding dress it will be 100% custom fit and flatter me in a way no other dress off the rack will and I won’t have to stick to the big girl section of the store to get it!

*image courtesy of myshoeconnection.com