Why I may be naked or in a red jumpsuit at my wedding

May 2012 – engaged in Asheville, NC. Why I wind up with three rings.

Summer 2012 – kinda not-really start wedding planning. Really, just write a blog post about our big wedding wish.

Fall 2012 – discouraged by the ‘perfect’ venue not falling in our laps and none of the options being exactly what we wanted. Realize that our wish is not as cost-effective as we thought and perhaps would be more money. And more work. Lose steam.

December 2012 – realize that a venue that had been on our spreadsheet since June was the perfect venue. Book the venue and finally have an answer to “So, when’s the date?”

January 2013 – kick “wedding planning” into high-gear. The first of our many barter-partners gets on board and due to the awesome responses to our inquiries, we realize we might be able to pull off an almost 100% bartered wedding.

May 2013 – everything is set. Save for our wedding-outfits, which we haven’t even begun to think about. Well, I have been occasionally Pinterest’ing dresses I like, if that counts.

Summer 2013 – the world freaks out every time my answer to “What’s your dress like?” is “I haven’t started looking.”

I’m not into fashion. I’m heavier than I’ve been in years. I’m not into the traditional wedding-dress’ness of expense, alterations, fittings. That combination is probably the reason I haven’t embarked on the journey some gals dream their whole lives of taking and what you’re ‘supposed’ to start twelve-months before the wedding, not one month before.

I know I don’t want anywhere near any of this —

and that I want a dress that I’ll wear again. And that to me, a ‘cheap’ wedding-dress is $28, not $800. And that I’ll never ever pay traditional wedding-dress costs of $2000, $5000, $8000. And that I want nothing to do with traditional wedding-dress shopping where a gaggle of your friends and family and sales-ladies weigh in as you rotate around a dressing-room. No beads, no sequins, no train, no veil, no material that makes your skin being able to breathe difficult. No feeling at the end of the night of “Ahhhhhhhh… thank god I can take this off.” Same goes for shoes.

August 10th – I have a coupon for Kohl’s expiring this weekend, so I decide that’s a good reason to begin dress-shopping. There are actually some cute options. At great prices. There is one that I know is THE ONE. Tucked away on a rack it isn’t supposed to be on, 75% off, the last one I see. What a story this’ll be! I find the perfect wedding-dress Day 1 of shopping, less than a month before the big day,  for $25!! Unfortunately, the dressing-room mirror communicates that it and all of the other ‘cute options’ are cute if I was twenty-pounds lighter. Discouraged. I swing by Target on the way home, just in case. No options. There’s a David’s Bridal 1/2 a block from Target. Oh god, shoot me. Ok, but only because parking is easy. I break out into hives immediately upon walking in and seeing nothing but —

Fiancé and I have matching red jumpsuits (why, I have no idea. He had one and thought I needed one, so I came home to the surprise package one day). Perhaps we’ll take non-traditional to the extreme and wear those. That’d be cute, right? … Right?

This is not us.

August 12th – I find Dress One. Dress Barn, on sale from $50 for $25. Definitely something I’d wear again. Definitely not a wedding-dress. It’s bright white, I’d rather a cream. Love the neckline and sleeves. A bit short. Looks ok. Would look great if I lost 10ish pounds. I start to tell myself I’ll lose 10 pounds by the wedding. That hasn’t worked for the past seven-months I’ve been saying that so I scratch that thought. I buy it. Keep the tags on. Just in case.

Still August 12th – I find Dress Two. Marshall’s, on sale from $59 for $29. Love the cream-color. A bit more wedding-dress like than Dress One. The fit is great but the fit also makes me look six-months pregnant; argh! How can a fit be both horrible and wonderful?! Don’t like the neckline and sleeves. I could wear it again but not sure that I would. Love the pattern. Love the less-constricting thigh area than Dress One. I buy it. Keep the tags on. Just in case.

August 15th – I find Dress Three. Macy’s, $129. (And Dress Two, again, for $80! Woot at least on scoring a deal with the previous purchase!) Love the cream color, the flow-y thigh area, the vintage-y look, the could be a wedding-dress but could not be look. Not a fan of the sleeves. The XL is too big and looks like a fancy tent. The L fits. Would fit better if I lost 8 pounds. I buy it. Keep the tags on. Just in case.

I try all three options on again at home. I’m pulling for the non-Macy’s ones, both due to price and due to me loving the idea of getting my wedding-dress at Marshalls or Dress Barn. Damn it. Dress Three is wins.

August 18th – I get a tweet from a stranger —

Turns out he and his wife? own a wedding-dress shop. In Evanston, my hometown. OMG. Now that would be a story! Girl gets custom-made wedding-dress created for her two weeks before wedding from a local, small business in town where she grew up, that reached out when he saw her TEDx talk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t play out like that and I have a lovely new fan but no custom-made dress.

So Dress One, Two, and Three hang in the closet. Just to left of the red jumpsuit.

Stay tuned.