The dress said yes to me!
8 January 2023
While Joey has not yet begun his groom suit search, I have been busy with finding my dress since October! It was a very fun process, to be honest! And now I can finally say that I have a wedding dress! How that happened was very magical to me though so read on for how the dress said yes to me yesterday! (And sorry, I know that it's a lot!)
So last week I went to a wedding dress store in Dordrecht which was the second store I visited since October. And I was kind of still looking for that feeling when I was gonna feel like a bride in a wedding dress. Because the first time I tried dresses was in a store that specialized in "cheap" (read: still expensive) wedding dresses in Rotterdam. I tried 6 dresses in that first store I think and I just felt so weird in them. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror wearing those wedding dresses. So I thought "Well maybe I can't ever see myself in that way". So when I visited the second store I thought to myself "Okay you probably won't get the feeling everyone is talking about 'how you'll feel it when you find it', so let's just try to check for the most pretty one at least".
As you probably have seen in those wedding shows, the process of visiting a wedding dress store starts by discussing your wedding dress wishes, selecting a few of the racks and then fitting them with the help of a store employee. If you find the dress you like, you usually 'Say yes to the dress' and order it from the store.
When I was in the second store, I was telling the owner that I made a selection of the dresses from her website beforehand. My mom coincidentally noticed one of those dresses at the store. So my initial thought was that this dress was going to be my favourite. The owner chose a few other dresses, one of which I wasn't really feeling but I thought that it would be good to check off as "not interesting". Now it was time to try them on and she asked me whether I wanted to start with my favourite one. I answered no so that we could try the one I liked the least and work our way up to the favourite one. So we put that one on after some struggle, I looked in the mirror and my head and heart went "Oooooooooooooooooooooooh my God". I IN-STANT-LY got the feeling thinking "this is me in a wedding dress!". I came from behind the dressing curtain and my mom and sister said "Wow!!". So that was very surprising to me as I did not like it at first. I tried the other dresses we selected, but none were good enough like the first and my "favourite" one was the dress I ended up liking the least.
But I didn't say yes to that dress yet as it was still my second shop. That made me hesitate a bit because I did not have any experience yet and maybe I was not thinking straight or the lighting of that store was different or maybe blablabla. These were the kind of thoughts that went through my head. I even thought that perhaps that dress was just lucky because it was the first one I tried after a while. But even after I did try the dress on again at the end of the appointment and still loved it, I still decided to make more appointments at other stores.
So yesterday was my third wedding dress appointment and again we were making a selection of different dresses which were somewhat similar to the dress I liked previously. I did make a selection beforehand again and saw that they did have the same brand as that dress but not that model specifically. We were looking around, arrived at one rack and she asked me what kind of details I liked on the lace. I told her "something like this and that" and then saw further down the rack an example of that. I asked her to add this random dress to the selection.
Well, when we started changing into them, she took that one random dress for me to put on, I looked at it and saw that it was the same freaking dress?? I asked her "Wait what is the brand??" and she told me that it was the same brand with model something-something but I didn't recognize the model name because I had another model name in my head from the other store. So I walked out of the changing area and said to my entourage "I think this is the same dress, guys" and my sister said, "IT IS!!!" We had to compare with pictures I took from the other dress just to make sure though because I was so sure that it wasn't on their site and I was so confused about how I actually got it in the selection (I had selected 4 dresses from I don't know how many in that store) but I somehow did!
When I looked in the mirror I saw that I still loved it even in the different lighting and store and everything.
But still, I tried the other dresses juuuuust to be sure, but they did not feel like that dress. So I eventually asked the lady what the price was and she just could not find it in their system or on their website. She even had to call the owner to check and the owner said that the reason why she had difficulty finding it was because it came in new pretty recently so it was not registered on the website either. When I heard that my head just blew… The fact that I literally raaaaaaaandomly chose the dress out of so many dresses on that rack/store, didn't even recognize it initially and the fact that it came in new right on time for me to try on as well. I just could not think of anything other than that the dress was there for me. So I said right on the spot to the lady who was helping me that I wanted that dress and we toasted with champagne afterwards!