Choosing a bridesmaid dress: cue the bridal guilt!

One of the very first questions John and I answered, even before we discussed the "where's" and "when's," was the "who's": who would be in our bridal party? We decided to have five attendants each. I was represented by my best friend, Paige, as Matron of Honor, and four bridesmaids: my friends, Kristen and Libby; and John's sisters, Suzanne and Katherine. On John's side we had his best friend, Scott, as Best Man and four groomsmen: his friends, Gerard and Gerry; his cousin, Andy; and my brother, Bobby.

As soon as I chose my wedding gown, the time came to choose coordinating bridesmaid dresses. Little did I know, this was to become one of the biggest headaches in all of the wedding planning.

After I fell out of love with the wedding gown with the pink sash, I pretty much fell out of love with pink as a wedding color, period. When we first decided to have a spring wedding I imagined a color scheme of ivory, dove grey, and shades of pink, and a cherry blossom motif woven through all of the details of the day. It would have been pretty, but in retrospect, it also wouldn't have been very "me." I'm not a girly-girl by any stretch of the imagination, and I couldn't figure out why I even considered pink at all. Perhaps I was stuck in cliche-wedding mode where I felt that I needed to be surrounded by soft pastels. And besides, cherry blossoms bloom in April, not in May, so the whole concept was flawed from the beginning!

I bounced around a few more ideas for color schemes, but after I saw a video on The Knot regarding Spring Wedding Ideas, I found my inspiration. In the video they featured a gorgeous honeydew green bridesmaid dress by Jim Hjelm. The color was very pretty and the dress featured a ruffle cascading down the left side, which I thought echoed the fluffy layers of my wedding gown. They paired the honeydew dress with some gorgeous lilac and lavender bouquets, and I was hooked. This was our new color scheme! It screamed "spring" but was still a little different and unexpected.I immediately logged onto Jim Hjelm's website to look up the item number of the dress (#5624) and local retailers. I called all of the retailers in my area but their prices were not what I was hoping to hear: they ranged from the mid to high $200's. Bridal guilt immediately set in.

I then tried to find cheaper alternatives, such as ordering them from an online bridesmaid dress shop. The pricing was definitely better, but the disadvantage would have been inconsistent dye lots and not having one person measure all five girls, and I didn't want to risk having such an important part of the wedding get all botched up to save a few bucks.

But I hadn't even seen this dress in person yet. Maybe if I saw it in person, I wouldn't like it, and then I could stop stressing and just find a different dress altogether. I called Bridal Garden in Marlton and asked if they had the dress in stock, and they said they did. I went with my mom to see the dress and try it on myself. I loved it! The color was really unique and I thought that the rouching of the bodice would be flattering on all of my bridesmaids. I was hooked. But it was still so expensive. (Although, that being said, it was one of the more affordable bridesmaid dresses that Bridal Garden carried. Who in their right mind would expect their bridesmaid to pay $300-500 for an Amsale or Vera Wang dress, plus alterations?!)

I then called another shop, Country Way Bridal, that was located in Cherry Hill. It would be a bit of a hike for my bridesmaids, but maybe if the pricing was decent it would be worth it. They told me that they were having a sale on Jim Hjelm dresses, but that the sale would only be going on until the beginning of June. The bridesmaid dress I wanted would still be a little pricier than I hoped, but it was definitely the lowest price I was quoted from a brick-and-mortar store.

Still, bridal guilt was there. I thought that perhaps a better idea would be to go to David's Bridal and find a shade of green similar to Jim Hjelm's "honeydew," and just ask the girls to choose their own dress as long as they were all made of the same material and full-length. It would have been a good plan, but David's shade of "honeydew" was almost a fluorescent green. They didn't have anything that was even remotely close to the shade I fell in love with. Everything was either too bright, too "sage" green, or too "kelly" green. I left David's defeated.

I decided in the end just to go with the Jim Hjelm dress and to order the dresses during the sale. We ordered the dresses from Country Way Bridal in mid-May of 2008, and even though the sales associate told me that the dresses would most likely arrive that summer, I explained that I wouldn't actually need them until January 2009, the same month my gown was due to arrive. The associate said that would be no problem, and that they would order the dresses from Jim Hjelm right away but ask them to hold off on shipping until Country Way called them again to "release" the dresses. Sounded good to me at the time.

Many months later I would come to regret that decision, just like I regretted buying my own wedding gown for a while. It, of course, all worked out in the end, and the girls all looked gorgeous on the day, but it was pretty touch-and-go when January 2009 rolled around. But that's a story for another time!