my wedding dress

For quite some time, I've been following Kelly's Korner. She has been doing "Show Us Where You Live Friday". I have never participated because my apartment is nothing to brag about. However, this week, the tour is entitled, "Show us your wedding dress!" Now, this one I can do (and I even have a couple of stories to go along with the pics... imagine that). Luis and I are going to be celebrating our 1st anniversary in just a few days and I can't believe it has been a whole year already.

So, my dress... I went to at least a dozen dress shops searching for the right dress. I always went by myself because I didn't want to a) annoy anyone with my pickiness or b) have my opinions judged by others' preferences (the only person I would have taken with me would have been my mom, but she was 3,000 miles away). I went from store to store trying on dresses that were too formal, too frumpy, overly embellished, overly simple, etc. I didn't make it any easier when I decided that my skin tone looked better in ivory than in white (most stores only had 1 or 2 ivory dresses). Along the way there were a couple of dresses I would have been ok with, but they were way out of my price range. I eventually decided to try out a dress rental place. The great thing about this place was that all of their dresses were 2 pieces made to look like a normal 1 piece dress and you could mix and match to create the perfect style for you. Although I swore up and down that I would not wear a "marshmallow" dress, I absolutely loved this one on me.
One of the great things about the rental was that everything was included in the dress package (petticoat, tiara, veil, etc.). I had no desire to wear a veil but decided to take it along with me just in case I changed my mind (I didn't). My mom and sister-in-law (who was also my photographer) practically had to beg me to wear the veil for a few pictures. And I'm so glad they did. Although I hated it at the time, I now love the way it looks (and kind of wish I would have been wearing it the whole day). But hey, at least my niece had fun playing with it that day.
I LOVE my ring! As you can see, there is one center diamond with little mini diamonds circling around it and all the way down both sides of the band. My ring got run over by a car that very morning (long story). A couple of the little diamonds fell out so I didn't want any pictures taken of my hand. This one was captured without my knowledge and it is one of my favorites.
As much as some of the jewelers tried to bully me into buying a wedding band, I liked my engagement ring simply on its own. I decided (way back then) that I would wait until we started having kids to get a wedding band. I figured that once I got pregnant my fingers would get fat and my ring wouldn't fit anymore. Well, I'm not pregnant, but my ring sure has gotten snug in my first year of marriage.

I used to always wear high heels, but since Luis is only a few inches taller than me, I started wearing more and more flats. Flats are now my go-to shoes for day-to-day wearing. I have grown so accustomed to having feet that don't hurt, that I couldn't go with anything else for my wedding day (especially since I knew we would be spending a couple of hours taking pictures on the grass and I didn't want to have to deal with sinking).


This picture was taken right after Luis tripped on my dress as we were walking out of the temple together. There was a big footprint on the back of the dress for the rest of the day.

Sure there were some mishaps along the way (including when Luis dropped the slice of cake he was feeding me down my dress), but this was absolutely the best day of my life.