One Wedding Dress or Two?

Since announcing our engagement last Christmas a few questions have been asked by pretty much everyone. The first is 'where are you getting married?' - that's easy to answer - Idaho! The second is 'oh why Idaho?' That's pretty easy to answer too - it's beautiful, picturesque, more likely to guarantee sunshine (fingers crossed) and most importantly, Laura's family and quite a few good friends are still there. The third question is then 'who is wearing the wedding dress?' That question is also easy to answer! Well, it is for us, but we thought we would expand on it here.

Our fitting rooms were next door!

The answer is 'both of us'. We will both be wearing full length, strapless wedding dresses in just off-white. We will both have veils and we will both walk down the aisle. That being said, the styles and design of the dresses and veils are very different so we get to keep our individuality and taste but we complement rather than clash with one another.

We have also been asked if we have seen each others' wedding dresses, and if you saw our post (HERE) about our wedding planning trip to Boise last summer you will know, the answer is YES we have. From the moment we started talking about our wedding we have always agreed that we both wanted to wear a dresses and as Laura is my best friend and me hers, who else would we want to go wedding dress shopping with?!

We both wear dresses on a daily basis, we both enjoy being girly and both of us grew up dreaming of our wedding dresses so for us the dress option was the only one we ever planned to take. Interestingly, when Laura and I first got together one of her reasons for only seeing our relationship as a 'short-term fling' was because she could never imagine actually marrying a woman. I understood that sentiment. It wasn't as if you often saw two feminine lesbians together, let alone marrying one another. When we did start looking into it we saw couples dressed identically and that did not appeal - we are way too different to agree on one dress and we wouldn't want to feel like we were 'marrying ourselves' or hear the 'who wore it better' that would inevitably happen?! - but eventually, through blogs and googling, we found more and more femme ladies pulling off weddings we could imagine having.

We weren't short of choices!

Laura's Mum joined us on the trip in Boise and my Mum will join us for our fitting in the UK twelve weeks beforehand, so thankfully they have/or will have been involved in the process, but ultimately we value each others' opinions on everything including wedding dresses. By seeing each others' we were also able to confirm that the colours and styles worked together - something we didn't want to wait to find out on the day!

Even the experience of shopping in David's Bridal together was great fun. The assistants -after they realised we were marrying each other and not just having weddings on the same day- saw the potential of a double sale and could not have been more helpful (extra surprising in a place like Idaho!). From suggesting styles to helping us into our dresses, the session turned into a girly party. We were excited to see each other in the different dresses, we were overwhelmed when we knew the other was wearing 'the one' and we will always remember it as a great experience. We were expecting trauma, tears and disappointment - we are both particular after all, but we got tears of joy, laughter and excitement. Not many couples get to share the experience, but we are so glad we did. As it will have been nine months by the time we get married since we last saw each other in them, combined with the makeup and hair, we will still get the overwhelming 'first look' experience on the day as well.

Even down to the bell ringing that we the store had as a tradition when you found the dress you would wear. Standing side by side, hand in hand we were told to close our eyes and imagine wearing the dress surrounded by friends and family on our wedding day- I burst into tears, Laura followed shortly after, at the thought that we were starting our journey to our happy ever after!