My Biggest Wedding Regret & Re-do (featuring BLANC Bridal)
October has always been one of my favorite months of the year, but I’m just realizing why: there are SO many good things that come in October for us! The weather changes, the fall candles go on sale at Bath & Bodyworks, we celebrate my official remission anniversary, and we celebrate out 1/2 year wedding anniversary. This year, it will be five and a half years since Dustin and I said “yes” to each other and were sealed for time and all eternity in the Boston Temple! It’s super surreal to think we’ve been married for that long - part of me feels like it’s been much longer and part of me feels like we were married just yesterday. I can’t imagine life without Dustbust, but I also can’t believe that I’ve shared my life with him for over eight and a half years!
Anyway, knowing that we’re approaching our SIX YEAR wedding anniversary has me all kinds of nostalgic. Since I didn’t start my blog until a year after we got married, I never really wrote about the actual wedding planning process or how our day went. I’ll save most of that for another day (because there is a lot to unpack there) but I’ll leave it at this: there were only three months from the time Dustin and I got engaged to when we got married and we were going to school in Idaho and getting married in Boston. My mom had never planned a wedding before and we planned ALL of it across the country from each other. She did an amazing job pulling together our reception in the time we gave her, but we also learned a lot during the process so that my sisters’ weddings would go a bit…smoother.
Today, I want to talk about one of my two biggest wedding regrets. While I recognize that the most important part of our wedding day was that Dustin and I decided to commit to each other for the rest of our lives (and beyond,) I still feel a bit bummed when I think about the things I would have changed if I could go back in time. The first one? The fact that I somehow convinced myself to get my hair done the NIGHT BEFORE the wedding and sleep on it to save time in the morning. Yeah, that was definitely not my most brilliant idea and most definitely #badnewsbears. My second regret? I didn’t take the time to choose a wedding dress I loved or felt comfortable in.
Because we were on such a tight timeframe and budget for our wedding, I basically had one weekend to find a dress. We lived in a small college town in Idaho (where we went to school) and had very limited options in terms of bridal stores, so Dustin and I took a 4-hour road trip to Utah to visit my best friend and to shop for a wedding dress in the city. Juli (my best friend) and I had literally one day to find a dress and after going to 4 different shops and trying on about 20 dresses, I ultimately decided to go with the most affordable dress that I didn’t completely hate. It fit okay, I liked the train, and it was within my budget. But did I love it? No. Did it fit well? No.
On my wedding day, it became evident that everything that could possibly be wrong about a wedding dress was wrong with my wedding dress:
- It was SO stiff and hard to move in. I couldn’t lift my arms above my head (in fact, I could barely lift them straight out from my body) because the sleeves didn’t have any flexibility in them.
- The fabric was really heavy and didn’t breath well. I felt really sweaty, even though we got married on a balmy April day in New England
- It wasn’t built for larger chest sizes, so it was really tight and my bust actually didn’t fit into it correctly. I couldn’t even wear a bra with it because it added too much to my size and I couldn’t zip it up.
- I gained about 15 pounds from the time I bought the dress to the time I got married and since the fit was already unforgiving, it was all-in-all unflattering for my body shape.
I’m telling you, this wedding dress situation was #badnewsbears all around.
When I look at our wedding photos, all’s I see a bride so uncomfortable in her skin and even more uncomfortable in her dress. The photo when my brothers-in-law are trying to pick me up and I can’t move my arms and I’m terrified my dress is going to rip in the back? Seriously cringeworthy. It makes me so sad, because those photos are supposed to represent the best day of our lives and all’s I can see if a girl who didn’t like her body and who didn’t like her dress and who wanted the day to be over ASAP so she could get out of it. That kind of girl doesn’t take very happy-looking pictures, let me tell you.
When the creator of BLANC Bridal reached out to me and asked if Dustin and I would be interested in being her models for a stylized bridal shoot for her new modest bridal line, I JUMPED at the chance. I mean, when do you have the opportunity to re-do your wedding photos in a dress that you actually like? Pretty much never. Dustin and I took some 5 year anniversary photos earlier this year at my dream location, but I wanted photos in a dream wedding dress that I felt beautiful and confident in. I wanted to look at these pictures and not be distracted by insecure and uncomfortable me. I wanted to see US - a couple who is madly in love with each other and who isn’t stressed out by the pressures of crazy wedding day or how impossible it was to move in a very unforgiving dress.
Julia came to my house before our shoot and gave me the wedding dress experience I never had. All of her dresses are made to flatter all body types with high end, luxurious fabrics that are imported from from overseas fabric mills. Her base fabrics (satins, crepes, chiffons) are all 100% silk, which means that I didn’t sweat in them…at all. I was SO comfortable wearing these dresses during our shoot and could have easily danced the night away with out sweating off my makeup (something that did happen at my wedding. I’m telling you, it was #badnewsbears.) Julia’s dresses are all made in Oakland, CA by seamstresses with a lifetime of professional sewing experience sew each gown with special attention to each detail, so they are basically perfectly crafted.
One of my FAVORITE parts about the BLANC bridal collection is that the dresses can be mixed and matched to create different looks for different parts of a wedding day. For example, I wore my ideal “ceremony” wedding dress, which actually consisted of her Slip Gown with the Paisley Pocket Skirt and Lace Tee over it. That may seem like a lot of layers, but it was actually SUPER light and easy to move in. Later, I slipped the skirt off and just wore the Lace Tee over the Slip, which would be perfect for a reception look, when you want something a little more sassy and not as formal. Julia’s eye to detail, choice of fabrics, and creativity to create pieces that can mix and match in such an elegant way makes BLANC so unique and modern. Oh, and to top it off, she also does customizations on her gowns (like changing the neck line, sleeve length, or color) and she even creates one-of-a-kind custom gowns to boot.
Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that I wish BLANC was around when I got married, but I’m grateful for the chance to have a “re-do” of our wedding photos in modest and modern wedding gowns that were everything my original wedding dress wasn’t. If you’re a bride-to-be looking for modest wedding dresses, I highly suggest checking out BLANC and getting in touch with Julia.
Do you have any major wedding regrets? What dress do you like best from the BLANC collection? Let me know in the comments below!
