You're never fully DRESS(!)ed without a smile.

Major wedding box checked...THE DRESS (and the veil to boot!). Found it and it's glorious! It was the very first gown I tried on and was it ever a match made in heaven. Love at first sight. I tried on a couple more for kicks but I had to be loyal to my first fit.

I think a wedding dress says a lot about its wearer. So many cuts, shades of white, fabrics, layers... Are you slinky and beaded or big and bustle-y? Are you lace or silk or satin or cotton on the beach in fabulous sandals? There's one for every gal and... ofCOURSE I hear in ten years you want to be anything but wearing what you wore on that special day. Your beloved and timeless dress will, it seems, end up dating you more than even your birth certificate could.  Now...I think I'm immune but doesn't everyone else?!

Usually extremely overpriced, remember that you wear the thing for a day, but juxtapose THAT with the fact that you MUST must must be obsessed with it. What a pickle that puts us all in. I just hope everyone can fall in love with their gown (and their hubby) as passionately as I did. Your soul mate dress is out there waiting for you, delicately hung in some lovely cupcake factory (That's what those dress shops look like. Big fluffy cupcake factories...).

Finding THE dress (maybe I should name her...) was a big sigh of relief to say the least and there was one perk I didn't expect...

Phil TORTURED and teased me about the proposal. He would allude to engagements starting in march, april, may, june... he would tell me that perhaps he was holding the ring as we talked on the phone... or maybe it was just a fork I heard clinking over the line.... he just wouldn't say. I was tormented...he was elated. 

SO... now I know something he doesn't know! The bride's best kept secret!! The big day garb! Oh beautiful retaliation. And so I sent him this photo.

It's me... In my dress of course! 

He acted pretty cool about the prank. He even tried to turn it around on me by saying he could see the dress in the reflection of the mirrored wall. Regardless of his reaction I take quiet satisfaction in the knowledge that at least I'm learning a little from his trickster ways.