Maggie Sotterro is in the lead...

Woa! What a fun-filled Thanksgiving Weekend! It was truly amazing to be home and spend time with my family for the past 4 days straight! It sparked a whole new round of wedding excitement in me and I feel a little bit back on the bandwagon as far as planning goes. I think the fact that I feel my life will be so much in shambles for the next month with my move to Chris's house, is causing me to actually be super-organized and super on-top of things in an effort to feel like my life isn't spiraling out of control.

So, on to my first dress shopping experience!
Friday night I went to Ann Margaret's Bridal Shop in Palmerton, PA and I went with my mom, dad and sister. This place was adorable, and super quaint. I was the only customer in the entire store and they had two people assisting me with the process. This place paid great personal attention to me and I can tell that they would be great to work with for both the wedding and bridesmaid dresses. My only concern is that she didn't have that large of a selection and even though I really, really wanted to try on dresses other than strapless...I pretty much only tried on strapless. As everyone told me, the strapless were actually really nice and did not look as bad on me as I had imagined. But, I still would like to try other styles! Cap sleeve, halter, straps...anything just to see if those styles are also flattering. (However, the few straps and halters I did try on, did not look good on me) I tried on maybe 9 or 10 dresses that night and left with one definite Maggie Sottero dress that was my favorite.  I love including images in my blogs, but unfortuantely don't want to put up any images of the dresses I try on. I have to leave at least one element a surprise!! Instead...Please enjoy this cute picture of a bumble bee:

Saturday, I went to a new Alfred Angelo store that is really close to my house in PA. This place was immediately different from our experience on Friday night. The place was packed, they were overbooked, there were brides trying on dresses everywhere, there was no privacy, and it was pretty chaotic. They did not have an assistant to help me try on dresses because they were all helping other girls, so my mom had to come in and help me get in and out of these huuuge dresses. That actually ended up being kind of fun and turned into a nice bonding experience anyway...though my mom probably feels differently because she did all the work! I left there liking three dresses. One was a new, flashy, strapless design. The other two were very nice, srapless, ivory, beaded. However, when I came home and looked at the pictures of the Alfred Angelo dresses next to the Maggie Sottero....Maggie just looked so much classier to me.

Things I learned while dress shopping this weekend:

• I like Ivory or champagne colored dresses.
• Strapless is just fine on me.
• While I loooove the grecian style dresses, I'd rather have a dress that's form fitting on top to give me some shape. (Embrace those curves!) I may look for a grecian style dress for my rehearsal dinner.
• I like ruching on the stomach that arcs over to one side.
• Two words: Sweetheart neckline.
• Getting both my mom and my dad's opinion on the dress was super important to me, as well as my sister's! I hope that they can all continue to come looking for dresses with me (only 10 more places I swear!!!.....jk)

So now I have an idea of what I'm looking for and it's very exciting! I'm so glad to have gotten the ball rolling on my dress shopping and can't wait to go home at Christmas to do some more. We plan to go to Bridals By Sandra in Nazareth and Jon's Bridal where my friend Mandy got her wedding dress, so it must be good luck!