5th one is IT

It was the fifth gown I tried on...my wedding gown. It's never the one you think it's going to be when there are 8 wedding gowns lined up in the dressing room. I went with my Mom to Tierney's Bridal in Morristown, NJ (www.tierneysbridal.com), where owner Alyssa Tierney guided me to the perfect gown that dropped my jaw and brought tears to both my and my mother's eyes. I'm not going to describe it or share a picture (since Joe reads this blog!), so I'll tell you a little about the ones that DIDN'T work:

1. Gown #1: You start with the one you like the least on the hanger. Never the one you like the best. So I looked like a cupcake with silver dragees in that one. Next!
2. Gown #2: Here Come the Boobs. Next!
3. Gown #3: This was the one I *thought* would be IT, but it was way too old-fashioned and too romantic with too much lace. It just didn't feel right and didn't elicit any emotional response. So that was a bummer.
4. Gown #4: I loved how it looked on the hanger, but the sample size was way too small and it was way too similar to both my sister's and sister-in-law's gowns. So that was a No.
Alyssa went back to grab some more options, and there it was. Gown number 5. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. And my Mom called me at 10pm last night to say, "I was just thinking about how beautiful you looked in that gown." That's how you know you got the right one...hours later, and you're still thinking about it. And the entire experience at Tierney's was phenomenal -- this is the gown shop all brides in my area need to visit. They are on The Knot's Best Of...list, and owner Alyssa Tierney gave honest feedback about each dress, was an incredible objective resource and had none of that ultra-pushy, ultra-complimentary pressuring that I've seen at other shops. It was like shopping with a friend who cares about you. I couldn't be more impressed.

After the gown shop, Mom and I celebrated with ice cream sodas, and then I called my 12 year-old niece in Tennessee to have her pick out her own junior bridesmaid dress online. THAT was fun! She has such a great little fashion sense and had such terrific suggestions about which color of dress would coordinate best with the bridesmaids dresses....and then she accomplished something that I and my Matron of Honor Jill haven't been able to do for a week: she picked out the perfect bridesmaid dress! While Jill and I have been e-mailing real and fake dress suggestions to each other, my niece dove into the Eden Bridals website and found the perfect style. She's so honored that she got to make the big decisions, and she cracked me up when I showed her my wedding gown photo -- where, admittedly, the model is standing very strangely with one arm up in a Grecian-type pose. My niece took one look at that photo and said "It looks like she's doing 'I'm a Little Teapot!'" So on the wedding day, she and I will get one photo of us both doing that exact same pose.

It was a great day....a really great day...