Since I realized that the narrow window of time that I had to order a dress was rapidly closing, I scheduled three, sometimes four, dress shopping appointments a week. It was after store number three that I started to get tired of seeing myself in yet another white dress.

Not even twirling around like a pretty princess cheered me up. // Image via Good Housekeeping
The dreaded Dress Fatigue (TM) was setting in. Before it fully had me under its spell, I visited two more stores and tried on about 10 more dresses to make sure I was getting the full bridal experience.

Store number one was about a 30-minute drive outside of Seattle, but it had rave reviews on Yelp and didn?t require an appointment, so I thought it would be worth the trip. It was packed with ladies on a Saturday afternoon, all searching for specific styles or grabbing dresses and rushing to try them on. Definitely a different experience from the more structured appointments I?d had. All pictures personal, with thanks to the wonderful consultants that took them for me!

Pearls and Lace Dress 1: Justin Alexander—maybe Style 8845"
Since I was an experienced dress shopper at this point, I went looking for styles I hadn?t seen yet to make sure I wasn?t missing out on anything. The first dress I picked was this sweet number. The skirt weighed approximately 50 million pounds and reminded me of one of those fairy tales where a girl wears a dress made out of flower petals. Thumbelina, maybe"
The on-site ...