Regrets and Second Guessing

I knew I was in trouble the night after I put the 50% deposit on my dress. Almost immediately after signing the contract, I felt like I had made the wrong decision, and that I had let too many other opinions sway my decision. That night,  I literally crawled into my mom’s bed with tears streaming down my face and sobbed that I had just made a two thousand dollar mistake. While she talked me off the ledge that night and reassured me that it was the perfect dress, what happened later that week made me more stressed than ever.

After paying my deposit, I had scheduled an appointment with the alterations expert that would be working on my dress as soon as it came in. I wanted to discuss altering the crumb catcher top into a sweetheart neckline, like the consultant had promised me. I was anxious to see the dress again, since I had already had a melt-down only hours after buying the dress. The seamstress was wonderfully sweet and obviously very knowledgeable, but was a bit apprehensive when I described the top I wanted. Uh-oh.

This is what I had...

... And this is what I wanted

She explained to me that she could “sort of” create a sweetheart neck line, but that it wouldn’t look like top I wanted. I was devastated. I had chosen that dress specifically because the consultant had told me it would work, but I should have known that it wouldn’t based on the fabric already on the top. I knew better. The consultant and seamstress asked me if it was ok, and I burst into tears and said (in true bridezilla fashion), “It’s going to HAVE to be, since I already paid for it.”

On top of having the wrong top, I started gaining my usual winter weight, and between purchasing the gown and being fitted for it, I could already see a difference in my hips — my most hated feature. I was second guessing everything that I loved about the dress when I bought it. The fabric was too ivory. It was too heavy. The cut of the flare was too low on my legs and made me look bigger. The top wasn’t going to work out how I wanted it to, and it fit very few of my original requirements. It was too flashy, too sexy, too expensive, too EVERYTHING. It was nothing like the dress I had always dreamed of.

What do you do when you have an extremely tight budget and you’ve already made an expensive decision? Nothing. You deal with it, and have to accept the fact that you made a hasty decision. Ok, ok, it wasn’t hasty  — it took me four weeks of humming and hawing over the decision, but I had made a split second change and handed my credit card to the wrong shop.

I still obsessively look back at the Martina Liana picture — the picture that I’ve already mentioned is ridiculously deceptive and looks like it’s straight out of a magazine. I know it’s not reality, but it’s pretty hard to let go of that dress, especially because I’m not very happy with the one I’ve got. There are many days when people ask to see pictures of my dress, and I find myself making excuses for it… and I’m pretty sure that’s not how it should be.

I’m hoping that when it comes in in my size (remember, sample sizes usually come in 8-12 — this was on the upper end of that and I’m between a 4 and 6) and see the dress in pristine shape, I’ll fall in love with it again. I’m trying to stay open minded about altering the top, and I’m praying that when it’s in my size, the mermaid flare will hit a little higher (and my hips will appear a little smaller). I’m just terrified that I’ve spent double my budget on a dress I have to excessively alter to like, and that it won’t turn out how I was originally told it would.

There are still several things I love about the dress, like the fact that it gives me a little booty I didn’t know I had, the beautiful sheen of the fabric, the pearl and rhinestone embellishments, and the gorgeous top to bottom buttons. I’m clinging to those things, and catch myself staring at the pictures that show off those assets (and my own) far too often to try to ease the tension.

You should know that I’m a self-proclaimed perfectionist, and I regularly question the shoes/make-up/sweater/underwear I’m wearing throughout a normal day. Obviously that’s going to be multiplied with the most important dress I’ll ever wear, especially since I don’t have it to see and reconfirm my original choice. The dress should come in between late February and mid-March. I’ll keep you posted.