Dress shopping: Day 1

I started my dress shopping with some significant challenges and advantages.


Challenges:

1. I was already in love with a dress I could never have from this collection by Colette Komm, who attends the same congregation I do here in Manhattan. http://www.colettekomm.com/. I love the skirt on Dress 3 and the jacket on Dress 5.
2. Many dress shops could not get dresses in my size in three months.
3. I want a dress that covers my shoulders.

Advantages: Sarah and Kortlyn.

We started shopping at Macy's, but the dress selection didn't excite us and the wait to see a "bridal consultant" was too long.

We left and when to RK Bridal, the Walmart of wedding retailers. We got to RK around noon and their waiting list to see a consultant was so long it had been closed for the day.

Then we applied Sarah's how-to-survive-in-the-city motto, "Everything is easier outside of Manhattan."

At David's Bridal in Queens we found a compromise: decent prices and decent customer service. You got to look through their catalog and try on your three favorite dresses.

These dresses were non-winners:

This was the best dress of the day:

Notice the bridal consultant tugging on my jacket.

This woman was the manager and she could sense a bride who might buy like a shark smells blood. This dress was much better than the others I'd tried, and as soon as I showed interest, she decked me out with a tiara, veil and bouquet, had me take a wedding walk around the dressing room and told me about how the whole day of my wedding my bridesmaids would to attend me.

I don't think being attended by Kelly and Collette will be quite like the vision she painted.