27 Dresses

No, this isn't a film review. That's roughly how many I tried on yesterday.

It was the beginning of the search for my wedding dress, and I was hoping to have chosen 'the one' by the end of the day. But as it turned out, I ended up finding 'the ones' - the more I tried on, the less keen I was on the idea of discounting them because I couldn't remember how they compared to some of the dresses I'd tried on earlier in the day. I went to three shops, and there was a clear favourite in each of the first two, but I came away with a list of 3 definites and 2 more possibles from the third shop, making a total of 7.

I was surprised to find out that bridal shops don't let you take photographs of the dresses - ostensibly to protect the designers' copyright on the patterns and to prevent cheap knock-offs, but as one shop assistant said, they have printed brochures and there are photos of all the dresses online, so whether it's the bride-to-be in the photo or just a model, if you are that set on stealing a design, you can do it easily enough. The first two shops were kind enough to let Jen sneak a photo of me in the favourite dress, but by the time we got to the last shop, to be honest I was getting a bit fed up by then, and my feet were killing me from standing up all day (there was nowhere to sit in the changing rooms), so each time we put a dress on the shortlist, Jen flicked through the catalogue and took a photo of the model in the dress, so at least we had a reminder of what it looked like.

Yesterday evening we looked at the photos we'd taken and the websites of the three shops and managed to whittle the shortlist down from 7 to 3; 2 in one shop and 1 in another. Mum and Dad came down today so I'm hoping to get appointments to try those three on again tomorrow, get Mum's opinions, then make a decision on the one I want.