Bridesmaid's Dresses

Ok so this is the post that has been giving me so much grief with the pictures.  So I snuck them in over my lunch at work and finished up the text at home.  I guess until I figure out what is up with my computer that's how I'll have to be posting.

I had wanted to show our bridesmaids dress shopping experience from about a month ago!  Initially I was going to ask the girls to just pick a grey dress that they liked, but then we decided to go dress shopping to see if there was anything out there that we liked.  At the first 2 stores we didn't have too much luck and the selection wasn't great.  Here's the only one we said could maybe be a contender.  The picture looks much nicer than I remember thinking it was in person.  Very cute and flattering, but we weren't sure about the belt (and it wouldn't be in purple) and the side view wasn't as flattering as the front...

Thank you to my wonderful sister for being my model and trying on any and all dresses I threw her way...while my mum took care of baby Lily.

Off we went to the next store where we had so much more luck (we did stop at another store before this one and quickly walked back out again as all the dresses either looked like they were made from grandmothers-of-the-bride, or like they had been on the racks since 1992). 

We narrowed it down to two final dresses, this being one of them.  Again, not in this colour, but we loved the one strap look for a late summer wedding.  It also had good structure as we kept thinking we'd like a taffeta or some material like this because we've always found it to be more flattering/forgiving...

This one I remember I had tried on for my sister's wedding almost 3 years ago, so we thought it would be fun to have Kyla try it on too.  We loved the rouching (I have no idea how to spell that word) to the one side where the fabric bunches together, but there was just something that didn't make it stand out as much as the dress above...

Again, not this bright orange, although it is a fun colour.

Finally she tried on a dress that, on the rack we nearly passed over because of the material alone.  We had tried on many dresses in this softer, flowier material, and found that it only emphasized everything you didn't want to be emphasized.  But we were in good spirits and thought what the heck, what's the harm in trying it on!...

As if this girl had a 5 week old baby!

And then we fell in love...it was so flattering, so fun, so feminine and we thought it would be a style that most of the other bridesmaids would be comfortable in (what a task alone that is, trying to find something to appeal to 4 different girls!)  At first the sales associate said that if we didn't like it, the strap could be removed, but after more and more gazing, we really liked it.  This one also had the "rouching" above and below the waistband which is really quite flattering.  It was hard to try to picture it in a different colour, we even loved the colour as it was, but we're going with soft grey dresses for a lighter, more summery look.

So all the girls have ordered their dresses and now we wait.  I hate waiting.  I want to see them now!  They're supposed to be in by the end of July and then they'll have to be altered and such but I'm dying to see what they'll look like in the colour we chose!

So that's our wedding installment for the time being, I'll be sure to do more as it gets closer to the date!

Any bridesmaids dresses/shopping experiences worth sharing?  Dress from hell, or ones you loved?