Wedding Wednesday: The truth about my wedding dress

This might be one of the most shocking posts I've ever written, maybe even more than the one in which I announced I quit my job. This is the truth of what happened in Guangzhou this last Sunday, when I went to do the first fitting of my wedding gown. No one knows about this, {except for J, his parents and my parents}, so even my best friends will find out by reading this... 

I was SO excited to finally have the first fitting of my dress this last weekend. The wedding gown is one of the most important things for the bride on her big day, and I was all over the moon about finally trying THE dress on.

We arrived to the store right after lunch and our sales assistant greeted us enthusiastically. Last time we had been there she kept saying how perfect I looked on that dress, and taking pictures of me in it, really crazy haha, anyways, she was really into it because she didn't do the same thing for the other clients, so it was all really from her heart. So there I was, ready to try MY dress, the one that had been tailor-made from a small size to fit my even smaller body. I changed to my nude bra, put my wedding shoes on and... finally tried the wedding gown! {As I mentioned previously, we are doing the dress search thing Chinese style, that means bride and groom go to choose the dress together, unlike Western tradition where the groom doesn't see the bride on her wedding dress until the big day.} So I went out of the changing room to take a better look in the big mirror, and to let J see. At that moment, I wanted to cry. And those were not excitement tears, touched by the magic of the moment or anything like that. I JUST DIDN'T LIKE THE DRESS ANYMORE! 

Crazzyyy, I'm totally nuts and I know it. The sales lady was still super excited and jumping all around me while snapping some more pics, but I just didn't see that dress as THE dress anymore. I thought the material didn't look that good and it was a bit too sparkly, and I just said in Chinese "I want to cry", and the whole store went aghast. The sales lady went white like a ghost and stopped moving, the store owner put his hand on his mouth in astonishment, and J looked at me in disbelief. Yes, the dress that I said was SO princess-like, SO royal, So perfect, suddendly looked TOO sexy, TOO sparkly, and just not a match for the kind of wedding I wanted. J knows me too well to even think I was kidding. He said the dress was gorgeous but nothing could change my mind. We altered some parts of the dress and it looked better, but still not like my dream wedding gown. Maybe not elegant enough... I don't know, I just felt it was not the one. J asked me not to panic, said our wedding was still 4 months away {exactly 4 months away tomorrow!} and the most important was for me to be happy and very sure about my choice, so if I wanted to buy another one it was not a problem whatsoever. I felt immediately relieved to have such an amazing husband-to-be, and I told him I wanted to go to some other store to take a look at some more dresses and see what I would end up doing. 

Little did I know back in March when I ordered my dress, that I'd still be hunting for THE one three months later. Sigh. So there we were, back to where it all started, and looking at everything all over again. We went back to the store where everything kind of began back in early 2012. In spring 2012 J and I were still not engaged but knew we would eventually be {because we are just meant to be!}, and we were visiting the Canton Fair with my parents for some China sourcing {yes, this was J and I's first business, but you might not know because I opened this blog later on and never really talked much about it, except for in my about me section}. Anyways, at the Canton Fair I suddendly spotted a wedding gown stand from Knightly, a Chinese brand from Shunde {that's the city where J's family comes from by the way! Hello fate?}, I went in and loved their dresses. They were like the ones in Europe only at Chinese price, how awesome :) We found this store online and I kept an eye on it to make sure I hit their store as soon as J proposed. After our engagement we did indeed go to one of their stores from wedding street in Guangzhou, but as you all know I didn't end up picking a dress from them. But Knightly made it to my life again during our pre-wedding pics, where I wore 5 different dresses, picking one from Knightly on purpose and... the team forgot it in the studio when we were already an hour away from the city ready for the shooting!!! They asked me to pic any other from the ones in that other location and I refused. I had to have my Knitghly dress! So they did send someone to get it for me! Ha! It's the dress I'm wearing on the picture above, and we will be using one of the pics from this dress for our wedding invites, so of course I had to have it! {By the way, I'm not sharing my pre-wedding pics with you just yet because as you can see from the one above, the haven't been photoshoped yet!} .

Back to this weekend, we went into one of the Knightly stores, and saw some dresses we had already seen previously, and some new ones. Among these new ones there was one that caught my attention, so I decided to try it on. I LOVED IT. Not only it had all the elegance I was looking for, it was extremely special because of several details that will certainly not go unnoticed, and it had a complement that matched our wedding theme perfectly. Awww I so wish I could tell you more so that you knew what I'm actually referring to, but of course I can't. I told J: "This is it." He thought I lost it, because I seemed so sure about it and we hadn't even seen much stores yet. I said: "I want it! I want this dress!" He advised me to go take a look at some more stores before making the final decision, and so we did, but my mind was set. So we did go back to the store and... I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This time yes, my wedding dress, and it matches everything: my style and our venue! I'm SO thrilled!!! 

You must be wondering whatever happened to the other dress. Don't worry, I got it too, and I will be wearing it in my Hong Kong wedding on December 29 where I need to wear from 3 to 5 dresses, so you'll be able to see it too :) How crazy is this story? For Chinese people it may seem not so weird since they use so many dresses for their weddings. For us westerners buying a second wedding dress after you didn't like how the first one you picked came out is like unimaginable. Well and specially because wedding dresses in Europe cost a fortune! Oh well, all's well that ends well! Now let's hope for the best when I try my new dress in two months :D