The Moment My Dress Became THE Dress

Saturday, I had my second dress fitting. Back in November-ish Jere and I brought my dress to a local seamstress I'd read fantastic reviews of. Apparently she's some kind of dress magician :D Although I put the dress on, I didn't consider it a 'real' fitting because we were really just discussing the major alterations rather than the fit. When I went back this weekend however, I realized that it WAS a fitting, and remembered why I bought this dress.

I have to confess that, over the last few months, I was second and third & fourth guessing my decision. See, I made the number one mistake when it comes to buying your wedding dress--I kept looking at dresses. I've read more than a few blog and forum posts from girls that had done this very thing, to varying degrees of stress, from questioning if they'd made the correct decision to actually buying a 2nd dress. I had a vision of my dress, and the one I bought was VERY close, but not exact. Honestly, unless I had it custom-made, probably at great expense, my vision was impossible to achieve. What was my vision you ask? Essentially a combination of these:

from Alfred Angelo. This is the neckline &
embroidery inspiration

from Titanic.This is the shape
inspiration

The dress on the left is the one I found as I stupidly kept looking--it is the closest to my vision as I've ever found anywhere; but I already have a dress, and this one is only available in the UK. Since I bought my dress, my only visual reminders were dark cell phone pics of of it hanging limply and ill-fitting.

Then, on Saturday, I put my dress on again; after the sleeves had been taken off, and some of the hemming was complete, and the bodice had been taken in & up a bit. Is it my vision, suddenly come to life and staring me in the face? No, of course not. But I'm happy with it again. This IS the dress I'll be married in. Chris is totally getting my ideas and is able to predict some of them before I say anything, like opening the armholes and narrowing the skirt. I go back in March for another fitting, and that will hopefully be the last "working fitting" before I try on the finished product and take it home.