the perfect dress & other deets.

there have been moments when i've thought that planning a wedding might be the death of me. there are so many tiny details involved in a wedding, and i am not a detail-oriented person at all, so a lot of the things i need to decide on, i really could care less about. then there's the big things, that i do care about. and that's where my indecisive-ness kicks in and makes things really complicated.

but after a month of being engaged, i have a day and place, a dress, a photographer, wedding party apparel, decorations, and the cake and flowers in order. pretty much in order, at least. and when i say i have those things in order, i really mean that because of my mother-in-law, my mom, and my cousin, these things are in order. they are all so dang incredible. without their help this whole thing would be a mess and i would be a raging bridezilla.

since i started planning my wedding, everyone would tell me that when i found the right dress i would know. everyone made it sound like when i tried on "the right dress" i would have this breathtaking moment of looking in the mirror at myself and receive with swelling emotion revelation that this dress was the one, and everyone in the room would cry. like love at first sight i guess?

well, that's a bunch of bull. when i went shopping  for a wedding dress, i found nothing. everything, and i mean everything, was either not something i would ever wear, way above our budget, or would have to be altered a thousand different ways to even remotely fit me. i didn't think any of the dresses i found would be worth the time and money of altering. i mean the dresses were all pretty, but none of them stood out to me and none of them i even liked enough to spend money on. i wasn't super impressed with anything i saw, and after trying a couple on, would end up going to chick-fil-a because there was one in the area, or going home early to be with dawson. 

i'm kind of a weird girl, i know...

for a long time there was the possibility of me being able to wear my mom's wedding dress. it's a beautiful and super unique dress and i was pretty excited about this option, but there were a lot of things we would have to have altered on the dress for it to work out, and it turned out that we weren't able to use it- parts of it had yellowed and couldn't be restored. so i decided  i was just going to borrow my sister-in-law's dress. it was pretty and it actually fit me. i was perfectly happy with this decision.

well, my mom wasn't. i hadn't had my "aha dress" moment. she found a handful of dresses for sale on ksl and emailed me the links to them throughout the day. i was completely uninterested in all of them, except one. i simply emailed my mom back, "i kinda like this one," and then forgot completely about it. i wasn't really interested in finding a dress, i had one that i could borrow and i had begun to think this "perfect dress" stuff was a bunch of bologna. i had found the perfect lingerie before i had found the perfect dress, for crying out loud! but my mom convinced me on saturday to go down to provo with her to try on the dress i had kinda liked from the pictures she sent me.

and, well, i loved it. i didn't receive revelation or burst into tears when i tried it on, but i simply loved it. so we got it. and the more i look at pictures of it, and the more i see it hanging in my bedroom, the more i love it.

kids, the right dress is out there.

i don't mean to sound like i hate planning a wedding, because i don't. more often than not, i absolutely love planning a wedding and i love being engaged, like when i catch a glimpse of the centerpieces dawson's mom is making, when i see one of my bridesmaids try on their dress, when people tell me how cool going through the temple is, when my dad tells me he's proud of me for choosing dawson, and when daws and i are laughing and i realize i'm going to be with him forever. those are the moments it hits me and i get filled with this ridiculous, indescribable happiness.

 that's what all these wedding details are for anyway, to celebrate dawson and i being together.

hands down, there's nothing better than knowing you're marrying your best friend.

-kandi