it’s love actually…

So this weekend, my friend came down to the Bay Area to go shopping for bridesmaid dresses and her first time bridal gown shopping. She was nervous about the wedding dresses though didn’t expect to find THE DRESS on this trip. I’ll save you the agony: she totally did.

She scheduled two days worth of appointments with 3 shops scheduled for Friday and 2 more on Saturday. On Friday, with her mom and dad in tow [I got some great bonding time with her parents this weekend], we headed out on our first shop of the day: The Wedding Party in Berkeley.

The Wedding Party is a teeny, tiny shop. No seriously. Teeny tiny. It’s upstairs from A Cuppa Tea and easy to miss. As the name implies, they specialize in bridesmaid dresses though they do have a small collection of wedding dresses available to try on. If you’re looking for ornate blingy gowns, you won’t find them here. They do carry some WToo, Nicole Miller, Siri and a couple others that I forget and their price point is around $1,200 or so and below so it is a pretty affordable place to shop for wedding gowns.

We were helped by Jennifer [there are two women: Clara and Jennifer] and she was super attentive and great to work with. For both dress shopping parts, she let us pick a few and then suggested a few more to try on, explaining the different fits and effects fabric has. After fussing over the bride, she fussed over me. Now in the two times that I’ve been a bridesmaid, I’ve never been fussed over to the same level as the bride. I will say that, as a bridesmaid, to get the same level of service that the bride-to-be received was an extra special touch. Jennifer helped me into the dresses, and I needed the help on a couple of them since they were not my size [that said, I had never been clipped into a dress before. Now I know how brides feel!] and was actually excited to see me in a couple since they had just gotten them the day before and I was the first person to try them on.

The best part: we could totally take pictures.

As you can tell, most of them were a tad too small [that first purple one and another purple one that I didn't post, I had to be clipped in] but they were pretty fabulous. They had just received the purple and green dresses [both from Siri] and I loved the little rosette bow Jennifer fashioned instead of doing a regular bow. I loved the tulip top on the pink one and the red one-strap dress was had me feeling very glamorous. I felt like I was going to a red carpet event. Jennifer told me they nicknamed that one the “Michelle Obama” dress. I totally see why.

The purple dress definitely stayed with us since we were still talking about it the next day, however, the prices were a bit out of my budget. I believe we were in the $200+ range with a couple of the dresses, though with the a couple of discounts [ordering seven dresses or more and ordering before November 30th] it would have landed at a more manageable $185 or so. Price withstanding, I would have easily gotten my dress here. A lot of the dresses they had didn’t scream bridesmaid dress so it would have been easy to conceive of an occasion to re-wear the dress to, which isn’t an easy feat with bridesmaid dresses.

However, the bride just wasn’t too sure if everyone would have wanted to spend that much considering that we’ll all be flying to Seattle for the wedding anyway. But I would definitely shop here for my own wedding gown [and I did spy a couple I wanted to try on myself] and Jennifer was totally not pushy at all. It was a really fun and relaxing visit.

From there, we headed to San Francisco to go to Bridal Image where we were met by two other bridesmaids [did I mention there are seven of us in total?]. They had a more extensive collection of wedding gowns and carried the typical heavy satin beaded ones. They had replaced the designer tags with their own so it was hard to tell which designer made which dress but according to their website, they carry COAN Couture, AgapeEver, Blue by Enzoani, Casablanca, LaSposa by Pronovias, Maggie Sottero and Robin Jullian. Their bridesmaid dresses were the traditional kind and nothing really stuck out to us so we didn’t try any on. Plus, you’re not allowed to take pictures until after you purchase the dress.

Our final stop for the day was La Boutique des Brides at the Gift Center in San Francisco. The Gift Center is a wholesale facility that houses a bunch of jewelers and a few clothing shops that is not open to the public so you MUST make an appointment before showing up. The store’s owner, Hilda, helped us out. Like the others, we picked a few and she got a feel for what the bride liked and didn’t, and picked a few more, including The Dress. They carried Maggie Sottero, Paloma Blanca [whose gowns are OMG gorgeous. I had only seen pictures but there were so many in the store that I was just drawn to], Pronovias [same here too], Watters/Watters and Mikaella [which I was excited to see since there were a couple on my wish list]. In case you’re wondering, their price range for wedding dresses are $500 – $2200.

They only carry two lines of bridesmaid dresses: Bill Levkoff and Alfred Angelo, though they do carry the ENTIRE Alfred Angelo line so you can try on every dress in that catalog if you so desire. This was a good thing since the bride is letting us all pick our own style of dress within the same color. We tried on a few different dresses there from both lines but since we weren’t sure if we could take pictures, we didn’t. The highlight of the day was when I tried on this cute pencil skirted dress and the ruching made me look pregnant. Serious, the skirt of it puffed out just so that I was able to pat it as if it were my stomach. No go.

On Saturday, we made only one stop: Gigi’s Bridal and Formal Wear in Fairfield. Its another tiny, local shop that carried Alfred Angelo dresses. While my friend was trying on wedding dresses and convincing herself that she did, in fact, find her dress the day before, I perused the small selection of bridesmaid dresses. I will say that this store is also a general “formal wear” store, carrying attire for weddings, quinceaneras, proms and tuxes so we were a bit distracted by the more…interesting dresses.

The racks that held the bridesmaid dresses were packed to the gills. The type-A within me spent some time trying to organize the rack to make it easier to pull dresses but ultimately I felt like I was shopping at Ross on a bad day. It definitely wasn’t my favorite but the prices were pretty good so I sucked it up and dealt with it because I’m a grown up and that’s what grown ups do. They suck it up and deal.

Anywho, I tried on quite a few Alfred Angelo dresses but I only have pictures of the top three that we liked as a group. But I did find pictures of a few of the other ones I tried on.

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We called the first dress the “giraffe dress” and maybe because the dress wasn’t my size, the pleats on the side were wide and made me look kind of boxy, I didn’t make it out of the dressing room in the black one because I hated it, and the last lacey one was really cute but a tad too long.

I wasn’t too hot on the first purple one [#7123] but it was similar to a Bill Levkoff that one of the other bridesmaids liked, the purple one [#7016S] was a surprise contender for me [I honestly don't know what was going on with my face there], and the green one [#7073]  may just be the winner. Actually, it was the only one that I really wanted to try on after looking through the catalog.

The owner, not sure if she was in fact, Gigi but let’s just say she was, so Gigi pulled out a couple more bridesmaid dresses that I immediately nixed before trying on. They were your typical bridesmaid dresses that would be impossible to rewear [they had those weird, sparkly silver brooches on the side] and the pictures were proof positive that I did not like them at all: the face says it all.

I’m pretty positive that I’ll end up with the green dress. I loved the sweetheart neckline and the slim fit of it. It was like the two favorite features of two of my favorite dresses at the Wedding Party in one dress – and definitely more wallet-friendly. This dress will keep me honest on my fitness goals for sure. This was probably the best bridesmaid dress shopping experience to date. Definitely better than the David’s Bridal debacle of 2006.

Anything is better than that.

So which dress was your favorite? Anyone else bridesmaid dress shopping? How is it going?