wedding dresses

[Marduk]

I'm a man, and I'm going to comment in this thread just so I feel it isn't being exclusionary.

Carry on.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Since I'm fairly frugal, and I've never been one of those girls to plan a dream wedding, I think I would be just fine with a plain (non-wedding) white dress for my wedding. Something along these lines. And then I could wear it again! And not hate myself for spending so much on a one-time thing.

And then, you could totally tie-die it and have it be the most epic ex-wedding dress ever! I like your thinking.

[TheAnswerIs42]

Somewhere in the past couple of years I realized that most LDS women don't wear their fancy wedding dress to the actual ceremony . . .

Is that just a recent trend? Or has that been going on for a while?

That's what I did. We hadn't even thought about it, and then one of the dress shop-owners asked us about our plans. My mom and I looked at each other, a bit confused. And the lady said "let me just tell you, in the temple sealing, you have to wear temple clothes, not just the dress. By the time you get the body suit under [to cover up to your neck and down to your wrists] and all of that and then kneel down in a big mushroom cloud of poofy skirt . . . well, let me tell you girl, if you are going for a 'look', that isn't a 'look'!"

I was so glad I took her advice, actually. I really liked that my simple temple dress was for the ceremony so that the focus wasn't on the big poofy dress. The big fancy dress felt a bit . . . ostentatious for the temple.

I can't speak for how long that has been a trend or anything, but I have seen others do it since I was married nearly ten years ago. I would say a majority of the ones I saw did wear their big dress inside, but a few have worn a temple dress inside.

The dress was still worth it to me, though. I might not ever wear the dress again, but I'm going to look at the pictures on my wall every day for the rest of my life. And I sold the dress for most of the cost a few months later, so it wasn't as big a hit as it could have been.

[Imogen]

I'm totally getting a wonderful, gorgeous, sparkly dress to wear for my (hypothetical) future wedding. with lots of lace. and then i will cut it up into hankies and bouquet wraps and things for my future children. neither of my parents have had a real wedding (they're divorced and remarried). i don't even have pictures of them from when they were married. and i wish i had SOMETHING from my mom's wedding to my dad to have with me on that day. so i'm going to make sure my kids have SOMETHING for themselves or future brides/grooms that's from my wedding day to their hypothetical father.

[Unit of Energy]

I always figured I'd like to own my wedding dress. I loved knowing my mom had a dress that I might someday wear. I don't really want to wear her dress anymore, but I appreciate knowing that it is still in the family.

[krebscout]

The Cleaning Lady made my dress for a modest price, and it's simple enough that I wore it in the temple with some long-sleeve attachments that she made. I had no business "designing" my own dress, but it's nothing too crazy, and I still love it even though I would do it differently now. I would have done a lot of my wedding stuff differently now, but I don't think I would have learned that lesson without going through it first. My invitations, though, are still just as awesome as they were then.

[UffishThought]

Really, Krebscout? What would you have done differently, now?

[Genuine Article]

And the lady said "let me just tell you, in the temple sealing, you have to wear temple clothes, not just the dress. By the time you get the body suit under [to cover up to your neck and down to your wrists] and all of that and then kneel down in a big mushroom cloud of poofy skirt . . . well, let me tell you girl, if you are going for a 'look', that isn't a 'look'!"

Instead of a temple dress I have a skirt, collared shirt, and white cardigan combo, but I wore my wedding dress to my sealing. The temple people were on me about wearing a bodysuit, or whatever it is they offer, underneath, and when I said I just wanted to wear my white cardigan over my dress they looked at me like I was crazy. To this day I have no idea why they were so against it. I think maybe they were surprised I would cover up my dress, but it was already going to be completely covered up anyway with temple robes, so what did it matter what I looked like? In my mind a cardigan was a much simpler solution than changing in and out of a bodysuit. My way involved zero outfit changes, so I was downstairs in the foyer and ready to take pictures a good five minutes before my husband had finished changing.

[Portia]

I want Emiliana to weigh in now and tell us if she's going sleeveless, strapless, or sleeved!

Haha. I really don't know yet. Probably not sleeved, 'cause ... well ... I'm not Mormon. So far we've mostly been dealing with issues such as, "Your home state or mine?" (his), and "Is there any possible way we could get all this together by December?" (no).

I'm not Mormon enough to want a temple wedding; I just don't like sleeveless gowns. I'll pass on the late '80s Princess Di look! (Though Kate Middleton's was pretty.)

[Portia]

http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users16/k ... 394402.jpg

I love this number. seems to work well on a voluptuous figure

[Defy V]

I hadn't heard of the body suit. I just wore long sleeves over my wedding dress.

This whole discussion is making me laugh a little because I'm one of those tacky girls who essentially wore a white prom dress as my wedding dress. Lacy bodice, square neck, poofy skirt . . . and I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved my dress. Then again, I always loved loved loved getting ready for prom (it was one of those rare times that I truly felt beautiful) so I don't mind that my wedding reminded me of that a little.

[TheAnswerIs42]

. . . they looked at me like I was crazy. To this day I have no idea why they were so against it.

I think those temple workers get so used to streamlining brides through that any deviance stops them short. Or at least, a similar thing happened to us. I have a lot of non-member family that was very disappointed that they couldn't come to the wedding. And one of them mentioned that one of her favorite parts of a wedding was watching the groom's face as he saw the bride in her wedding dress for the first time. And I thought, hey, that's something we can do (since I wasn't wearing the wedding dress inside). So we were having hubby go outside and wait for me, and then I would come out so that she could see his face as he greeted me. Different, but not a big deal. And the concession meant a lot to my sister-in-law.

Every single temple worker along the way out tried to get us back together. Sometimes they wouldn't even tell us why, they would just say "wait here" and then we would have to quickly explain things again when we realized what they were having us wait for. A couple of them just didn't get it, told me that "wasn't how things are done", etc. It was really hilarious. The marriage still counts if we walk out separately and then spend the rest of the day/our lives together!

[Katya]

I hadn't heard of the body suit. I just wore long sleeves over my wedding dress.

This whole discussion is making me laugh a little because I'm one of those tacky girls who essentially wore a white prom dress as my wedding dress. Lacy bodice, square neck, poofy skirt . . . and I'm not ashamed to admit that I loved my dress. Then again, I always loved loved loved getting ready for prom (it was one of those rare times that I truly felt beautiful) so I don't mind that my wedding reminded me of that a little.

Good for you. And good for anyone who does what they want to on their wedding and not just what other people think they ought to do.

[Portia]

From looking online, I've come to the conclusion that I'll have to get custom measurements rather than off the rack: my waist and hips are 4-6, but my bust is 10-12! Sizing is so weird.

(And I may be one step closer to this being relevant: I had a DTR last night, and it WASN'T horrible, which they nearly always are. Hooray!)

[Genuine Article]

one of them mentioned that one of her favorite parts of a wedding was watching the groom's face as he saw the bride in her wedding dress for the first time.

Every single temple worker along the way out tried to get us back together. The marriage still counts if we walk out separately and then spend the rest of the day/our lives together!

I hate shopping, and I particularly hated wedding dress shopping, so I took Uffish and my husband along with me to keep me sane, so they saw me in my dress before anyone else. A lot of my friends really wanted their husbands to not see their dresses until the wedding day, you know, for the wow factor, but for me having some outside input on the dress was more important. Plus, what if you want it to be this big reveal and he really hates your dress? I guess it just seemed like such a hassle, and possibly risky to not have my husband see the dress.

I got a lot of grief for coming downstairs without my husband, which apperently is some sort of huge faux pas. It's true that every wedding I'd been to up until that point involved a bunch of us standing outside waiting for the bride and groom to emerge, but I got married in the winter, it was raining, and everyone was waiting inside, so what was I supposed to do, force them all outside in the rain so I could make a fake exit? Apparently I should have had the decency to spend hours primping so everyone could wait around for me instead of me casually wandering into the foyer alone and plopping down in a chair.

[krebscout]

Really, Krebscout? What would you have done differently, now?

Oh, I just would have been more communicative and decisive. I was kind of trying to please everybody or maybe just lazily avoiding the work, and so while it had my influence on it, it was a big mishmash of everybody's sense of taste and ended up looking kinda like an Under the Sea prom night. But actually my very favorite photographs are the ones people took on disposable cameras — just added to the '80s look. And my dress, I was going for kind of an updated Emma-esque look with an empire waist and slightly puffy sleeves...It was cute and Cleaning Lady did a great job on it, but my style has changed. Of course, everybody's does.

Honestly, a whole lot of thing about my wedding went so wrong (big things...like getting married on the wrong day) that we just threw our hands up and said whatever and enjoyed ourselves. And we really did. It was a mighty fun reception, if I do say so myself. The live jazz band was one thing I would absolutely do again.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

My mother has decided that there will be a jazz band at my wedding luncheon.

[Katya]

(big things...like getting married on the wrong day)

What do you mean?

[TheAnswerIs42]

GA- When my mom was showing my cousins a picture of my dress and saw (now) hubby coming, she hurried and covered it up. To which he replied " don't worry, they all look the same to me." When my fashion-focused mom gasped, he followed it up with "what? They are all white. They are all fine." No amount of " you did NOT just say that!" made him change his mind. And truly, if he expresses an opinion on clothing, it is either drastically good or bad. (Or lingerie.)

So he would have been no help anyway. But I'm glad your was!

Krebscout- You got good pictures from the disposables?!? Wow! I used to work at a one hour photo, and I in all the stacks of those I processed, I saw a handful of pictures worth keeping. Usually people handed them to a kid to play with. And between buying the cameras and getting them developed, I always considered that the worst waste of $150 ever. I am happy that worked for someone!

[krebscout]

(big things...like getting married on the wrong day)

What do you mean?

I'm sure I've told this story on the Board before, but here it is anyway...

We had planned to get married on December 27th. A few days before, news started reporting a Snowmageddon situation on that day. My parents' house is about an hour from the Denver temple on a good day, and my parents are super paranoid about driving in the snow. At about 10 a.m. on the 26th, my mother-in-law said, "Why don't you just get married today?" So we called up the temple, did my hair in about ten minutes, and a few hours later we were married. Everyone we had invited to the sealing was there already, though it turns out there were two "surprise guests" who were supposed to come the next day. We had planned a dinner for that night at...Cinzetti's? We called them all day and no one would pick up the phone, so in a desperate hope that they had listened to our phone messages and reserved a spot for our party of 24, we went there after the sealing anyway. They hadn't, and it would be a two hour wait. So after a good amount of fretting we all decided, hey, let's get some gigantic trays of Mexican food and just eat at home. At our reception the next night, anyone who did not live close to my parents did not come, on account of the crazy blizzard. Surprisingly, it was still a good turn-out.

Other things that went wrong include:
- Sauron losing his wedding ring. While we were taking photos. My parents spent more money on the metal detector they bought to find it than I spent on the ring in the first place.
- Several food tragedies like food poisoning, floor pizza, and road sandwich...which Sauron still ate.
- Getting to our hotel room with two twin beds instead of the king we had reserved. But that was fixed with an emotional but-it's-my-honeymooooon call to the front desk.
- And this is just funny, but we got one of those plaques with "Waldorf and Sauron Family, Est. Dec. 27 2007" engraved on it. But they spelled our last name wrong and, obviously, the date was wrong, too.