After shopping at six (yes, six) other bridal stores, I found the absolute perfect wedding dress at…read moreThe Collection Bridal.
Here's the thing: I found dresses I liked at pretty much every other store I had visited in the Tampa Bay area. But they weren't "the one" and I knew it. You see, there was this dress I had seen online from bridal designer Madi Lane that I had fallen head-over-heels in love with -- and I knew I couldn't make a final decision without trying this dress on. Just one problem: I couldn't find any stores near me that carried this dress! Even stores that carried Madi Lane didn't have this particular dress in stock. I started calling every Florida dress shop that carried this designer. Some would just flat-out tell me "no, sorry," while two offered to arrange for a loaner dress to be shipped in -- which was nice, but I'd have to pay, of course. The fee would be applied toward the cost of the dress if I chose it. I would've taken them up on this offer, until I spoke to The Collection, who told me they had the dress in stock! So I immediately made an appointment, and since it was far enough away that my friends couldn't join me on this particular weekend, my fiance actually came along for the ride -- but stayed down the street at Panera while I went to try on dresses.
Melanie was my stylist, and as soon as she asked what I was looking for, I turned around and pointed to my dress -- which was on the mannequin in the window. "THAT ONE!" She grabbed it off the display along with a few other dresses that fit the style I was looking for, and we headed into the dressing room. Of course, we made the mistake of trying on "my" dress first, because I instantly knew that was it. I didn't want to take it off. Everything else just looked terrible in comparison. Melanie knew it too... but I didn't want to say it was "the one" because none of my friends were there for that "say yes to the dress" moment. You only get one of those, after all. And she understood, so she made a follow-up appointment for me so I could bring my friends back to Winter Park and make a day of it.
A few weeks later, that's exactly what we did. We road tripped from Tampa and walked in, where this time Roya took care of us since Melanie was working with another bride. They had my dress all ready for me to try on, and as soon as my friends saw it, they knew it was exactly what I had been looking for. They brought us all out glasses of champagne, and let us take a million photos from every angle you could possibly imagine. I think we were there just as long as a regular dress shopping appointment, haha. Looking back at photos from that day, I have the biggest grin on my face! I've never been one who really cared a whole lot about fashion or high-end clothing, shoes, or anything of the sort -- so I had NO idea a dress could do this to me. Go figure. Once again, I did not want to take that dress off. Probably a good sign that I made the right choice :)
That was at the end of July, and they told me the dress would be in by December. So I was pretty surprised to have them call me at the end of September to tell me my dress was ready to be picked up! I wasn't able to get over to Winter Park until about a week and a half later, but the pickup process was super quick and easy. It wasn't until this final visit that I actually realized there's a free parking garage right behind the building. I'd only found it because there was a massive street festival going on that made regular parking pretty much impossible -- but on all my previous visits, we'd managed to find street parking just fine. Although knowing the garage was there would've made it easier, haha.
