Fancy dress!

***Disclaimer: I've made a bargain with Mike that he WILL NOT peek if I provide a link to photos of the dress. I trust him, so I'm going to post it. (Plus, I'll know. Sitemeter generates a record of outclicks. But mostly, I trust him.)***

I was back home in St. Louis for the weekend, with a single goal: find the dress.

I expected the process to be at least moderately difficult. After all, there are quintillions of options, and so many of them are lovely in different ways. I had gotten some ideas from the "fashion show" portion of the St. Louis Bridal Expo a few weeks earlier, such as useful terminology: drop waist, gathering and ruching, various neckline, skirt, and train styles, taffeta vs. chiffon vs. a bunch of other fabrics... I also had the sketch that my friend and eventual roommate Grace had made for me waaaaay back in our freshman year at Kenyon. Of course I knew it was silly to show up with a sketch for a dress that doesn't exist and ask for the closest thing, but it wound up in my "wedding stuff" filing folder nonetheless, between pamphlets for DJs and information on photographers.

It wound up being a whole group of us at the shops, which I had anticipated. My maternal grandma, mom, my aunt Kristin and her kids... Justin, who was understandably bored, and flower girl Kailyn, who amused herself by trying on dresses of her own... until (horror of horrors!) she learned that she didn't get to take each and every one of them home with her that very day.

Aside from that unfortunate moment, I did find a potential winner at the first shop; a beautiful chiffon dress with spaghetti straps, a ruched corseted bodice feeding into a crystal-edged split-front overlay skirt that was very flattering, and an absolutely gorgeous crystal-studded train (which we didn't even notice until the dress was on!) The design company was called Impressions. It was a different style but the same fabric as my mother's own dress, and very light and airy for a summer wedding.

I wanted to look at another shop that carried a specific gown I'd noticed at the bridal show, just to be sure. The gown in mind was unique in that it had a colored ribbon (with many color choices) underlaid behind the beadwork in the bodice and that continued down and made up the inside of a split train. I found it again, but the cut of the dress didn't suit my body shape. I tried on a few others while we were there, and one of them fit amazingly. It was by design company Sophia Tolli, and it had lace straps, ruching and lace applique on the corset-back bodice, and a fuller skirt with an interesting pouf of bustling to one side. The pouf was pretty, but located right at hand height where it could be constantly smashed and fiddled with, knowing me. Still, the fit was so flattering that I thought it warranted further consideration.

Grandma and mom and I wanted to have a look, for comparison's sake, at the selection at a chain store that has been described by friends as "the Wal-Mart of bridal stores." Unsurprisingly, they were right. While I'm sure that I'd be able to find a beautiful dress there with some effort, our initial try-ons weren't promising. The store attendant insisted on measuring me (since "most women wear the wrong bra size") and proclaimed me a B-cup. (Not since high school!) She brought me a strapless undergarment in that size, and true to the saying, they ranneth over. She also insisted that the styles in the store were "french designs" and thus ran small. If I fit in a 10 in another store, I'd definitely need a 12 here. Pretty much every dress she brought out was oversized, so I had to look past the crappy fit and try to imagine every dress in my own size. The helpful feedback consisted of pressing me to list what I liked/did not like for each dress I tried on. Some features that I was interested in, like corseting instead of zippers, were "going out of style," which was why they didn't have much of a selection with that detail. (This was patently untrue based on the selections at the previous stores.) We didn't stay very long, and didn't add any dresses to our list.

Since the following day was Saturday and shops get busy, we tried to plan ahead and call to reserve a fitting room for yet another store. It turns out that only two stores in the St. Louis area carry Sophia Tolli designs, and this second store also carried the first dress from Impressions that I had liked. I could compare them back-to-back at a single location.

We arrived soon after opening, and it was full of brides-to-be and their friends and family, so we got started on our own and I had to wait a bit for mirror time to look at the dresses. We looked around for other options as well, and I did find a fairly simple two-tone strapless satin dress that everybody liked, but I thought satin would be too heavy for early August. I found the Impressions dress and a couple of other dresses from that company, none of which were as good as the first one. Then we figured out that they didn't have the specific Sophia Tolli gown I had tried on the day before, but they had a selection of others from the collection, which I decided to try.

By then it was late morning and the store had started to clear out, so we had more space and assistance from the staff, which was very nice. Both of the Sophia Tolli dresses were beautiful. The second one that I tried on was my grandmother's favorite... when I pointed out that it was more expensive, she wanted to pay the difference herself! It was a beautiful full A-line dress with beaded straps and crisscrossed taffeta draping from the fitted bodice to partway down the skirt, which gave way to a tulle underskirt at the front. The back of the dress was also very distinctive, again corset-style at the top while the taffeta draping from the front continued into drapey bustling with a crystal accent partway down the skirt and leading into the train.

That was a gorgeous dress, but as soon as I saw it on I wanted to get back into the dress I had tried on just before! I think Kara and I both knew it was special, since she commented on it in the dressing room (before I saw it in the mirror) and we definitely shared a look once I had a chance to see the whole thing. I felt that it made me look like an elegant piece of statuary, or the figurine on some kind of fancy award... but in a good way. It's just me, I guess. The funny thing is that of all the dresses I tried, it was the closest in overall shape to the sketch that Grace drew way back when. She was really on to something! When I had asked at the other stores to try on dresses in that shape, and I had been told that it only flatters very tall and thin girls, so I shouldn't even try it. So much for that!

We ordered it in diamond white, which is like a pale ivory. Here's the link that Mike isn't allowed to click!

New date... 8-9-08!

So as you may have noticed, Mike and I finally set a wedding date. I selected it myself after consulting with one of the co-administrators of my program, so that I'd have enough time between my Qualifying Exam and the ceremony to take care of last minute plans, stay sane, and even actually enjoy myself. I wanted the wedding after the test, with at least two weeks between the two.

Of course as soon as I take the time to e-mail all sorts of people to let them know about the wedding date, I'm informed that my Quals have been moved from the first half of August to mid-September! Luckily we hadn't yet signed contracts with DJs, photographers, caterers, and such... just set up the church, hall, and celebrant with my home parish.

Quals are a pretty big deal in my program. It's a huge oral exam and research talk that determines my status as a PhD candidate in good standing. Also, the test is administered by a faculty panel, which is why scheduling them in summer is such a big deal. It turns out that even university faculty like to go on vacation every once in a while, when they can find time in their already busy schedules.

That and the fact that I want to take advantage of group prep sessions with my peers (which will work out better if we're all taking the test at about the same time) led me to decide that the easiest solution was to move the wedding... not back to the fall, since so many guests and participants are still students, but earlier in the summer with at least a month between the ceremony and the exam. It's not as ideal as the original plan, but it's survivable. We'd be able to schedule a vacation/honeymoon for after the test, as well.

So... the new date is August 9th, 2008! It's still a Saturday. Locations are the same as before, and I'm also staying on top of the changes by updating the wedding website. The date is more solid than ever since we've shelled out for deposits at the church and for a reception DJ this week... and I've gotten some assurance from the powers-that-be at school that they will work around MY schedule this time if the test date jumps again for any reason!