The Wedding Dress of My Dreams and How You Can Find Yours

Please understand we got married at the end of the Hippy era, so that influenced my dress choice. I attended a lot of weddings during that time. I had a lot of impressions to choose from about what I wanted in my wedding.

There were big traditional church weddings, nontraditional church weddings, backyard weddings, simple home weddings and weddings in parks and fields. In some, the couple was formally attired, some more simply dressed and some were so casual that they were barefoot. With many weddings the bride had flowers in her hair instead of the veil and had a cake decorated with fresh flowers.

I had a vision of what I wanted several years before I met my future husband and had told a family member and my best friends. What I wanted I'd not seen in the weddings, stores or in the dress patterns. It wasn't a common style. My family member found a pattern of what I wanted in a yard sale, the year before I married my husband.

I wanted a simple, long sleeved, A-line wedding gown that had a sheer, full length cape with a hood instead of the traditional veil or the flower wreath. I only needed to change the shape of the seam that connected the bodice to the skirt. The original came to a point in the center front. I changed it to a curve, to match the scoop neckline. The style was a good choice since my long hair was fried two weeks before the wedding and I was married in a short, curly pixie.

I didn't think that I could find my dream dress and I would need to compromise with something else. But I got it since I had others looking for what I wanted.

I went fabric and accessory shopping with my foster mother and attendants. We got everything for my dress and their outfits at the same time. It saved a lot of time since we were all together. We were able to decide on everything at the same time.

I would suggest that unless your preferred dress is a fairly popular style and all you have to do is find the specific size and details, it would help to ask your family and friends to also look for the dress. With more people looking you will cover more area than you could by yourself. This would also help if you aren't sure of what kind of dress you want. Those closest to you may understand what suits you.

The dress sets the wedding theme, so it needs to be one of the first items you look for. By choosing to look for the dress, before anything else, will give you the most time to find what you are looking for.

It helps to have flexible expectations. Perhaps you need to look in a bridal shop, a department store, a second hand store, a consignment shop, online, a friend's or family member's closet or in a fabric shop for the fabric and the pattern.

So then, you find the perfect dress but it needs an added or subtracted something and you can't walk down the aisle the way it is. Some shops do alterations. If you don't sew, there are usually seamstresses in your community who might be able to alter the dress to your specifications, or even make the entire dress.

Although I made my own dress, a woman in our church made my attendant's outfits since I had a wedding to plan.