Dress Shopping: Part Deux

Yesterday I went to look at more wedding dresses.

I was filled with apprehension.  Firstly, the whole plus size thing, and secondly, the whole price tag thing!

Our first appointment was at All That Glitters in Allders, Croydon.  The staff were lovely, but one of them couldn't stop talking, and the other one seemed bored with the whole thing and every time I said I didn't like something they'd picked out, she almost had to really stop herself rolling her eye at me.  She insisted on going through the book of dresses they had in stock and picking out all the things over a size 18, regardless of whether or not I liked them!  Erm, surely the whole point is that I LOVE my wedding dress?!

So after a few false starts we eventually found a dress, Amanda Wyatt's Princess dress.

Source

But to be fair, I definitely wasn't 100% about it and I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, it was so hot in there and the girl kept talking and the other girl kept rolling her eyes.  They told me I could have a lace back and but it would cost an extra 20% of the dress price.  I could have the train removed but eye roller didn't like the sound of me asking that and almost made out I wasn't allowed.  I could possibly have the straps removed and a halter neck put in.  Verbal incontinence girl kept saying it was all possible and eye roller kept rolling her eyes and in the end I realised, if I was having to make all these changes to it, it was not the right dress at all!

So, slightly disheartened we headed for lunch.  I was dreading the afternoon appointment even more, at Aurora Bride in Cheam, litrerally a 5 minute drive from home.  The reason I dreaded this appointment was for 2 reasons.  Firstly, I had tried to get hold of the shop in July when I first went dress shopping.   After leaving two messages and emailing them, I still had no joy.  I was pissed off but quickly discovered when trying to make appointments that most bridal shops are shut on Monday's.  Buggers!  So I was clutching at straws a little bit when I decided to give them one last try and sent them another email for an appointment.  3 days later, no luck, drawing closer to my day off that would be wasted unless I could cram another dress shop into the afternoon, my mum called them.  Finally, she had luck!

Now this is where I started to worry about this appointment.  Mum might have embellished it but the lady on the phone more or less said that as a plus size bride, as long as the dress fitted, it would be 'fine'.  Hmm, okay, so as long as the dress fits me, I should be god-damn happy I got into a wedding dress at my size?!  I was slightly enraged and when telling this to the girls on Twitter was told I should cancel the appointment.  Now, don't get me wrong, I should've done, but really, I had to try more dresses on because time is running out!!

So, off we trekked.  Arrived to be greeted by a pretty huge shop, nicely decorated, gorgeous soft carpet and the shop assistant in her socks, how relaxed!!  She gave me a stack of red discs (oh dear, this reminded me straight away of my awful experience at the Bridal Factory Outlet I visited in North Yorkshire, which I realise I didn't blog about.... another time!) and told me to put them on the dresses I liked.

I told her briefly that I wanted relatively plain, tulle skirt, sweetheart neck and she totally got it.  Within 30 seconds she had pulled out 3 dresses that were just so spot on, I was like, "Why the fuck didn't I come here sooner!" and also I thought, "Why the fuck didn't the girls this morning get it this quick?!"

I went prepared to my second appointment of the day, I went home before to change, put on jeans and a tshirt and the secret weapons, my Gok Wan undies, notably a strapless bra and a sucker-inner-thigh-and-tummy shaper!  This did make it a bit easier in the changing room as I wasn't concious of my mummy tummy. That said, the assistant in this shop made me feel so comfortable, it was just such a breath of fresh air.

Into the first one, I can't remember it, but I didn't like it much.  Into the second one, now, this was a bit more like it.  Interestingly all the dresses I picked out were from Sincerity.

This is the 'first one'.  (The actual first one doesn't count!)

It was called Sincerity Krystle but I don't know what the style number is so I can't actually look it up and find the official pictures!  But at £875 it was quite reasonable.

This is the second one.

This one didn't have a name as the tag fell off so I know it's 4533 and here is the official picture:

Source

At £935 it's still a reasonable price.

Here's some pictures of the details.

Skirt of the second one

Bodice of the second one

Bodice of the first one

So lastnight and when I had it on I preferred the second one.  I think this is because it actually fitted me.  That said, the first one I think will probably maybe suit me better.  I had a right old tizz about it in the early hours of the morning, and all this led to me feeling really depressed and calling in sick to work.  Fuck.

I don't know why it left me in such a weird mood.  I think because ultimately, I wanted a dress like this or this or a Candy Anthony (although, to be fair, I realised pretty early on I couldn't afford a Candy Anthony!)  And I guess because my dream was to have a short 50's style dress, I keep thinking I'm lying to myself by having something long and fluffy!!  

HELP!

Huge Mega Update Part 1: Wedding purchases

So I officially made my first wedding related purchase at the weekend.  We were at the Bijou Bride Vintage Wedding Fair at the Fleetville Vintage Emporium (I swear, if you're ever up near St Albans, do stop by, this place is an absolute MAZE stuffed full of really reasonably priced treasures!) and on my many many walks around the place (there was some interesting entertainment which I won't go into details about but lets just say I had to get as far away from it as possible!) I stumbled across a set of green glass bowls.  There were 5 small bowls and one large bowl.  They were really quite striking and I kinda though, well for £12.50, its not a bad price and we can use them on our sweetie table.  So, we carried on looking, Lex found an amazing green poison bottle for £2.00 which I was well jealous about and we took our bits to the till.

We got chatting to the owners and I carried on looking around, in the window I found another 5 small bowls and a medium bowl.  No price.  I figured it wouldn't be a lot.  The lady asked for £6 which actually seemed reasonable, and meant that 10 small bowls, a medium and a large came to £18.50, which is probably a little over the odds but still not a bad price!

They may not look like much, but they're lovely in person...

This is just a small selection of them!

What else?  So, we decided we needed to send out Save the Dates pretty soonish so people could book hotels/B&B's and just generally not book a holiday around then!  But there was a conundrum, what the heck to send?!

We had decided on a music theme a while ago and had toyed with the idea of making backstage passes for the Save the Dates.  But we couldn't agree on a design and we couldn't do one ourselves (despite the really best efforts and intentions of my wonderful sister Lex) so it all came to nought lastnight.

Then I remembered I had asked a designer friend at work to try and make us her own take on a design we'd seen when we first got engaged.  She's tweaked it so it looks different to the original but I will probably still only post teeny tiny pictures of them because I don't want to get in trouble (but people must copy stuff they've seen on websites all the time right?!)

So we're getting them printed onto magnets with Vista Print, which is working out to be really a lot cheaper than getting them done elsewhere.  I'll let you know when they arrive!

I'll post the rest of my huge update later/tomorrow, it's an exciting one, it's about dresses and includes some truly horrifying pics of my shoehorned into size 14 dresses with the aid of a satin panel and pins!!  Too funny to miss!!

Swing for Skin: What a blur!

So, it was nearly a week ago and I'm only just getting round to doing this.  My manage is going to walk in any minute I swear and say, "Show me what you've done today...."

Aside from work politics!  Swing for Skin was last weekend and it went swimmingly!  We've raised just over £1,000 for DebRA which is just amazing and would not have been possible without all the people who attended and bought raffle tickets, thank you so much to everyone!  I knew it would all come right in the end (aside from some minor hiccups with the raffle, I'll come to that!)

So I wore a dress from an online catalogue for the larger lady which was sourced for me by the fantastic Miss Matilda of Able Grable.  It was a nice dress, but not what I had hoped I would wear, but that serves me right for A: Not sticking with going as a nurse with my mum and sis and B: For being too overweight to buy anything vintage!

Andy and I, post 2 glasses of wine.....

Managed to get my hair done by Lipstick & Curls, well, one of their helpers, she was lovely.  Still haven't mastered Victory Rolls.

Ma and Lex dressed as nurses - and looking infintely the best dressed there, dammit!

The evening went in a bit of a blur if I'm honest, I used my two drinks tickets on wine which went right to my head and I ended up acting like a dozy cow for the rest of the night!  I did try and take some arty shots of the lovely afternoon tea we had (brioche rolls with smoked salmon, egg or ham with mini scones, brownies and sponge - NOM!) but I think the boat must have been swaying as they were all blurry....

Entertainment for the evening was provided by the super Polka Dot Dolls who were just fabulous (my mum wants to hire them for my wedding, she hasn't stopped going on about them since!!)

The Polka Dot Dolls

What else happened?!  Honestly, I'm really gutted because I don't really remember any of it, I really was that smashed!  And I'm gutted because there were so many girls I wanted to meet: Gemma from Retrochick, Landgirl1980 (you can tell I didn't meet this lady, I don't even know her name!!), Perdita's Pursuits (although, we did meet, briefly at the Rockabetty Party in April!) and, the one girl I really really wanted to meet, Annie.  I was gutted not to have met her as I heard she looked stunning!  Hopefully we'll have some kind of mini reunion at Christmas or something in aid of DebRA and I'll try to not get pissed so quick and actually have conversations with people!! 

So, at around 10pm, it was time for the big raffle announcement!  I took to the mic and in my best Bridget Jones impression, announced Commander Grant (who was a hit with the ladies.... ahem....) who took centre stage with the Polka Dot Dolls drawing the tickets for us!  This is where it fell apart a bit, we knew the big prizes, the Pashley, the Gin, the Able Grable and Rockabetty Studios vouchers, but all the other bits, which people had so lovingly donated, fell straight out of our heads and me and Lex and Andy were left a bit stuck and it was excruciatingly embarrassing!  But we got there, and I don't think too many people noticed.  It was a shame though because most of the winners weren't aboard and I think that left some people a bit deflated (yes, I saw your faces, I know how annoyed you were....)

 

And after that, I spent time 'out back' helping the lovely Kim (Melissa's mummy!) with the last few raffle prizes, Lex took to the mic again for the Silent Auction and I managed a rather drunked attempt at the basic Charleston stroll whilst the Polka Dot Dolls sang a beautiful rendition of Sing, Sing, Sing!

Here's some more photos from the night:

The Mums!

Easy tiger!

Fooooood!

Our amazing Captain for the evening - Melissa!

We have a winner (Finally!) This lady won the Rockabetty Studios package and was VERY excited!

This sums up the night for Lex

A few dancers left whilst Johnny Vercoutre played some tunes for us

The fabulous Auntie Maureen, who saved the day and was the most genuinely lovely down to earth vintage gal I've met so far!!

Melissa in her gorgeous custom Able Grable - it looks almost electric blue, amazing!  And, check the red shoes!!

So that's pretty much it, over, for another year!  We're planning next year's all ready - dust off your circle skirts and petticoats, we're heading for the 50s and have some really super surprises lined up already!  Stay tuned for more vintage fundraising action!!