Shipping Out The Dress - Post Wedding 6 Month Check

We are currently in the middle of grant season at work, which means I'm working 10 and 12 hour days to make sure everything gets out the door on time.  Aaron's truck was down for a week or so and they are still catching up from being behind, so he's working night shifts and overtime as well.  We haven't seen each other for more than a collective 4 hours since Sunday night.

As of Friday this week, we will have been married for six months. Welcome to our life.  It's fairly boring compared to some, but also crazy. I like it.

I've been thinking about what to write for my blog post about our six month mark.  It seems silly to me  to commemorate it as I'm about as bad as a man when it comes to remembering dates, but I also think it's worth it to look at one big milestone that we are about to face (as soon as I have time to make it happen): shipping off the dress.

Why am I talking about my wedding dress? You might ask.  Or better yet, why am I shipping it off?

Because my dress is probably one of my favorite things about our wedding. It has SUCH a good story and I just can't let that story end with me.  So I'm sharing my portion of my story here and I hope that another girl gets to add to it later.

The Best Dress Story EVER

When Aaron and I got engaged, my mom and I went dress shopping.  I wanted it to just be my mom and I - I had seen way too many episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" and I was not going to have that drama.  So we went looking for dresses.

I tried on every style we could find. It was fun, but at the same time, not.  It was frustrating.  I'm not the "sample size" (6 to 8), so the fitted dresses didn't go over my butt or hips and I had to "imagine" what it would look like on me.  We found a dress that everyone really liked, but something was missing.

First dress

When I showed it to my best friend Katie and explained my feelings, she told me I needed bling. She was right.

Shortly after, I got an email from The Knot about a trunk show happening in Raleigh hosted by an organization called Brides Against Breast Cancer.  All dresses were either donated by brides or designers and were 30-80% off retail value and all proceeds went to breast cancer research or education.  I suggested to mom we check it out, just to see what they had.  My mom and Jess, one of my bridesmaids, came up to Raleigh from Fayetteville on a Saturday morning and, much to everyone's surprise, we arrived thirty minutes before they opened.  Turns out I had been a bit overexcited and had gotten the time wrong.  No biggie - they opened early for us!

It was the best experience.  Not only did we have the entire place to ourselves for a while, but there were so many dresses to try on in my size! Not just that, but I saw plus size girls trying on multiple dresses too! Girls were giving each other compliments and opinions and it was just FUN.  It was amazing to actually be able to try on different style dresses in my size.  I probably tried on 15 dresses that day.  But it was Jess that found "the one."

Before that day, I didn't believe in finding that one dress. That one dress that could make you feel like a million bucks and the best version of you.  That one dress that could make all your insecurities disappear. That one dress where you are stroking and saying "mine" to before you're even zipped and in front of the mirror.  That one dress that could make you and your mom cry while shouting "Don't you make me cry!!" at each other because you aren't criers.

But I did.

Mom, Me and Jess at the trunk show with "the one"

I'm not going to say how much we paid for the dress and the veil, but I will say that it was a third of the retail price. But the best part was knowing that all that money went to something useful, not just my dress.

So now I'm shipping my dress off to Florida to go back on the racks.  I had one amazing wedding day in it, one that makes me smile to think about.  I have gorgeous bridal and wedding day photos to remember it by. To me, there is no reason to keep it.  I loved going dress shopping with my mom and having that experience and, if I have a daughter one day, I hope to have that experience with her.  I don't presume to think she'll want to wear my dress and I don't want it to be an issue.  And besides, it is one mammoth dress and it takes up valuable closet space!  It is an amazing dress and I don't want it stuck in a corner, a closet or a box.  I want it on the next girl, for it to make her feel like a million bucks and for it to erase any insecurities she has and I want the proceeds to go to something important - fighting cancer.

So, when I get a minute to myself, I'm happily shipping off my dress to Florida so that its awesome story can continue with the next girl.  I just have to figure out how to get it all in one box!

Happy six months to us, happy more closet space (soon) and happy hump day!