Wedding dress shopping, volume 3

I had SUCH a hard time deciding what to call this post, because my instinct was to call it something along the lines of "I GOT IT," but my OCD tendencies won in the end, so I went with the standard title to make it fit in the series.

But the real point here is: I GOT THE DRESS. It's been ordered. The deposit has been paid. It will arrive this summer.

And it is PERFECT. I realize that perfection can't really be quantified, but seriously, it's even more perfect than I remembered, because this time I had tried on lots of other dresses and I knew, really KNEW, that it would look as good on me as it does on my sister. Better, because the dress completely suits my personality. It's me. It's gorgeous, but I have full and utter confidence that I will be wearing the dress and not the other way around.

The thing about this dress is that I would never, ever have thought that it was the dress I wanted. The only reason I even picked it off the rack was because I liked the neckline and wanted to see what it looked like on. I barely even noticed the rest of the dress. And again last night when we went back and got the dress off the rack, I had a moment of fear because I hardly recognized the dress. And I didn't like it that much on the hanger.

But on a body. Specifically a body shaped like mine and my sister's. It's perfect.

So screw the fact that I didn't want strapless. Or ivory. Or a big train. Or beading. Or anything sparkly. Or anything elaborate. Because it is truly, utterly perfect. And I practically floated all the way home. And my iPod seemed to understand the moment, because it played nothing but happy, floaty love songs the whole Metro ride home.

Because it's part of a limited collection, there are no photos of it on the designer's website, but of course, we took pictures. The sample was too small for me, so my sister modeled it, but I held it up against me and you could see, just from that, how great it would look. Now, Torsten knows not to read posts about wedding dresses, and I know he would never intentionally do so, but just in case he's ever skimming the blog and comes across the pictures inadvertently, I'm not going to put them on here. But I did put them on Flickr. So you can see them there.

Having the dress makes my concept of the wedding so much more REAL. Throughout this process I have made a conscious effort to remind myself that no matter how much time and effort and expense go into the planning of this wedding, and no matter how much I'm looking forward to it, the really important thing is the marriage and the love that we will share for the rest of our lives.

And I still feel that way. But wow, having picked the dress makes me really be able to envision the actual wedding day, and the moment when we see each other for the first time. And picturing that moment makes me smile, really really big.