Finding My Wedding Dress

Almost immediately after getting engaged, I started searching for a wedding dress.

It’s something that every little girl has dreamed of. But, as I’ve gotten older I’ve also come to the realization that I’ll only wear this dress for a day (or two in my case). So I knew I wanted to be realistic (in regard to pricing), but I still wanted to find a dress that had my personality and style written all over it.

I also had the challenge of needing to find a dress on a short timeline. With getting engaged at the end October and planning to have a wedding at the beginning of August, I only had 9 months. And as an added twist, I knew I wanted to go wedding dress shopping in Chicago.

After finally settling on a wedding date in mid-December, we worked around the holidays and decided on the second weekend in February to head to the midwest. Stoked to finally go dress shopping, I booked two appointments. One on Saturday at The Crstyal Bride in Geneva, IL and the other on Sunday at BHLDN in Chicago.

Dress shopping in February meant that we were 6 months away from our wedding. And if you don’t know anything about wedding dresses, they’re typically made to order and take 6 months to make.

Going into my appointments I had an idea of the style and feel of the dress I wanted. Needless to say, as soon as I tried on the first dress I was utterly confused. What I thought I would like and what I actually like quickly changed. The silhouette suddenly seemed more important than the style. Thankfully, I’m super open-minded so this didn’t put a damper on the occasion.

While at The Crystal Bride my stylist, Kayla, helped me find a dress that I absolutely loved. And better yet, there was one in stock in my size that I could get within a week! I felt confident about this dress but still wanted to wait to decide until I had visited BHLDN the next day.

Thankfully I waited.

Going downtown Chicago is always fun, but this day, in particular, was perfect. There was light snow falling and we were visiting the ‘fancy’ part of the city. It was picturesque.

Better yet, my appointment at BHLDN was amazing! My stylist, Maddy, helped me find the dress of my dreams. It was both the style and silhouette that I was looking for. One of the many reasons that I wanted to visit BHLDN in the first place was because they keep their dresses in stock and they can be delivered within 1-2 weeks. And with that being the case, my dress is actually being delivered today!!

Now that I’ve found my dress, I’m on the hunt for local alteration services. Once alterations are complete, we’ll just have a handful of things left to plan for our big day.

We also got our engagement photos taken last weekend so keep an eye out for those! 😉