Anniversary Week

Wednesday (my anniversary), I took my wedding dress out. I looked through all of our wedding pictures, and told stories of our wedding to the kids. It was a little difficult getting into the dress on my own so I asked CJ to help with the buttons in the back of the dress. He fiddled with them for a little, and then told me, "Sorry Mom, the dress is just TOO skinny for you!"

Ahem. The dress actually fits just fine because I bought it when I was at this size. Right before the wedding I lost a lot of weight, so the dress was actually too big for the wedding and fits just right now.

Reminiscing about my wedding made me remember what it was like shopping for this dress and remember what my style used to be. Nine years ago I would have told you that I didn't want to wear jewelry on my wedding day, that I didn't want any beading or any decoration on my dress, and that I wanted a very plain and simple A-line silhouette. My groom insisted I wear earrings, to which I acquiesced in the end, and my Mom felt that a dress as plain as I was looking for would be too boring, and as you see, I agreed with her, too, in the end.

Shopping for a wedding dress seemed so daunting at the time. My Mom lived 600 miles from me and it wasn't feasible at the time for either of us to travel that far just to find a dress. My Dad wanted something modest, so the rule was no strapless, and no cleavage. I was sure the latter wouldn't be an issue, but it turned out that the dresses that had sleeves or straps all tended to be either too low in the front or too low in the back!

Another issue was the price tag. I've always shopped for rock bottom prices, and my wedding was no exception. My budget was $500.

I went to several shops and tried on several dresses. There were many beautiful gowns, but none of them fit all my criteria until I found this one. 

This dress happened to be discontinued when I found it, so it was marked down to $600 or something. My Mom ended up showing it to a wedding shop near her and they sold her the dress for even lower than the price I was quoted. I think it was $420, or something around there. The dress came with a detachable tulle train that is not pictured here, but was another selling point for me. I wanted to have a train for the church entrance.

The dress was meant to be!

For my fifth wedding anniversary, I also tried on the dress. Chris took this photo.

And here are some of the photos from my wedding day taken by my photographer www.kellysauer.com.