Bridesmaid Dresses!

So I got the lovely girls together to do a spot of shopping for some bridesmaid dresses. I had decided to completely stay away from bridal stores - why buy something that will be supremely overpriced? (Well, I did that for my wedding dress, but one time in my life will be ok I'm sure...)

We started our day wandering through DJs in the city - still find the clothes there too designer for me. There were some good things on sale, but not quite what I was looking for. We then moved on to Myer. I'd seen the Maticevski bridesmaid line exclusive for Myer when they first came out last year. Gorgeous dresses, and in my fave colour - purple! So I made a beeline straight to those dresses. Imagine my delight when I saw they were on sale - only $150! My fabulous BMs tried on the dresses, but to my dismay, there was one size that wasn't available in the purple - the sales assistant called all around Sydney & Melbourne searching - no luck! As a wedding is a special occassion, the sales assistant said she'd try Melbourne again and let us know how she went. There was always the option of trying to order a dress to be made direct from Maticevski.

So we decided to take a break for lunch to refuel, and then continue browsing to see if there was anything else out there.

SB had suggested Shieke would be a good shop to look at earlier in the week. I had my misgivings, as I'd always remembered Sheike to be full of very short clubbing dresses (or maybe I was thinking of Seduce?) but we went in to have a look anyway. Straightaway a dress on display caught my eye - a fabulous plum/violet/fuschia colour (I still haven't decided on the right name for that colour). It's called the five ways dress and can be worn in numerous styles. A floor length gown, there are press stud buttons on the hem and waistline, so that it can be converted to a shorter dress. The top of the dress is also extra long - so designed to enable different ways of draping/wrapping the dress around.

I'd originally seen this design from twobirds bridesmaids but at over $300, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go for it or not. So it was a lucky chance that we found a similar dress without even looking for it!

All my girls were happy with the dress, so I went ahead and bought them. My BMs though, have very kindly offered to pay for their own dresses, so I'll have to make sure I find extra beautiful accessories to gift to them.

This is a very long post on the subject of dresses, but one last thing to add - I'd asked CL (sister & maid of honour) if I could borrow her dress to do lots of colour matching. Genius that she is suggested that I ask for a fabric sample. I emailed Sheike, and I was in luck! I was so excited that when my sample arrived I was a little disappointed in the size - a strip about 1cm x 10cm. It's better than nothing though and will definitely be easy to carry around.

And easy to lose! FH tried to throw out the envelope with the sample still in it! Lucky I noticed before it went into the smelly wheelie bin! :)