Dress Me Up

Since I'm free as a bird this week thanks to Spring Break (whoohoo!) I took the opportunity to shop for our welcome reception the night before the wedding.  For some reason, I've really been looking forward to shopping for this dress, so I've had to restrain myself from starting my search too early and made myself wait until April to start looking.  Yesterday was April 1st, so off I went!

Back in March, Mr Trail Mix and his dad went shopping for his tie for the wedding.  They returned with two ties that cost...Well, more than all of my wedding accessories combined. Ever the champion of equality between men and women, I decided that I was going to (just this once!) abandon my Loehmann-friendly, cheapo-bride ways and therefore gave myself no budget for this dress. Let the fun times roll.

I went with a girlfriend and we hit up Bloomingdale's and Anthropologie.  I also managed to remember my camera and had my friend take pics of our favorites.  I probably tried on close to 20 dresses but I won't bore you with them all. Also, please excuse the terrible quality of the photos, dressing room artificial lighting is horrendous.  And ignore my hulk-like arms in most of these pictures, they're slightly terrifying...

Ok, are you ready for some serious dress shopping pics? Here are my top contenders:

This was an unbelievably gorgeous Carmen Marc Valvo dress in Bloomingdale's.  I love to wear turquoise and white together, so I was all over this dress. Is niiiiiiiiice, Trailmix liiiiiiiikes.

This Shoshanna dress was my fave from Bloomie's.  It fit perfectly and went so well with the yellow shoes I'm trying to wear (since I bought them originally as my wedding shoes but have since moved on, I would like to feel as though I didn't buy them completely in vain.) Plus, blue and yellow are our wedding colors, bonus!

I really liked this blue and white, paper-bag waisted dress, also by Shoshanna although my friend thought it was too casual.  I think with a statement necklace and less-frizzy hair, it could totally work.

Next up was the ever-inspirational Anthropologie.  Every time I walk into that store, I sigh and say to myself "I wish my life was like an Anthro store." Seriously, my favorite place ever; I could (and do) spend hours.

I didn't get a close-up shot but the embroidery and lace on this dress were TO. DIE. FOR.  Plus, I loved the ombre orange thing goin' on.

I am standing incredibly awkwardly in this picture because I'm holding the dress in the back.  The only size left was too large for me but since it was on sale, I decided the alteration cost might be worth it.  I loved this champagne dress, the bow detail at the top and the cut waist had me swooning.

So those are my top five dresses from this excursion.  And I'll confess, I bought one of them (although I'm probably going to keep looking and hold onto the receipt, just in case there's something better out there...)

I'm going to be mean and not tell which one I bought until I've made a final decision but I would love to know which of these dress is your favorite?? Which one do you think I bought?