Dress Success

We traveled to Utah at the beginning of this week in search of a modest wedding dress. We shopped from 10:00 am until 9:00 pm on Monday and it was exhausting. Tuesday we started about 10:30 am and shopped all day long until we couldn't shop one more second. By Wednesday morning, my daughter had narrowed her choice to 3 dresses.

Dress #1 at Allyse's Bridal in the University Mall. It was a unique dress that fit her body perfectly. It had a cowl around the shoulders and made her mid-section look tiny. It was very simple and had no beading.

Dress #2 at Gowns by Pamela was a rental gown. She mixed and matched pieces until she came up with a skirt and top that complimented each other and her figure. We all loved the big, poofy skirt. The price for the rental was a bit cheaper than to buy a dress and included the veil, corset, petticoat, and dress.

Dress #3 at Peggy's Bridal on north State Street in Orem. I actually bought my wedding gown at this store more than 25 years ago. This gown had a full skirt, making her look like a princess, beading, and a bodice that made her waist look tiny, tiny. When I saw her in it, I had to look away because it made me have tears. She looked like a bride and it hit me that she's really getting married. This dress earned the nickname by my older children of, "The cry dress."

After much deliberation and discussion, she picked the cry dress. Peggy's included the veil and the petticoat rental in the price of the dress so we were happy with it. Of course, wedding dresses aren't inexpensive these days and I choked on the price a bit, but she looks so beautiful. Just like I imagined her. She looks like a princess. And we now have dress success.

By the end of the shopping, the rest of us were pretty loopy, as demonstrated by this photo:

Yes, that is my son dressed up in a tiara and a veil. He was actually pretty good through the whole shopping odyssey.

Yay, the dress shopping is done. Now, on to invitations . . . .

Energizer Bunnies

I've decided that my daughters are shop-a-holics. I've spent the last 2 days in town, all day long, shopping for school clothes. By the end of the day, I couldn't get home fast enough. My daughters, on the other hand, were still anxious to, "go to just one more store," "buy one more thing," or "compare one more price." They still had all the energy and resolve to keep shopping until I dropped.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to capture that youthful energy and spray it on like perfume when we needed it most? Department store employees could spray bedraggled moms as they chased behind their teenage daughters in the mall. Then, instead of smelling like we fell into a perfume vat, we could actually have the energy to tell our daughters, "It's time to go home," for the hundreth time.

Doesn't it seem ironic that as we age our energy decreases? After all, isn't it when we're older and have to keep up with teenagers that we'd need the most energy? It's hard staying up until the wee hours waiting for a teenager to come home from work or waiting until a son or daughter returns from a date.

It continues to amaze me that my kids can run from one end of the day to the other and never bat an eye. I have a house full of Energizer Bunnies--that keep going and going and going.