Visiting Princess World

I took a half day off from work to check out the infamous Running of the Brides at the Hynes Convention Center - it was unreal to see how many dresses were crammed onto the racks:

Photo courtesy of Megan Jicha of the Boston Globe

My intent was to avoid the morning craziness depicted here:

Photo courtesy of David L. Ryan of the Boston Globe

So I opted to go in the afternoon. At 2 pm, this is the sight that greeted my eyes - there were still plenty of browsing brides but no craziness:

With hundreds of gowns to choose from, many were truly ugly - like this one:


And this one (what bride wants rosettes and tons of tulle coming out of their butt?)

Happily, I'm also glad to report there were tons of gorgeous dresses as well - I saw labels from some of the major bridal dress salons in MA and I found seven dresses to try on - this was the heap I lugged over to a quiet corner with a mirror:

Let me just say I was planning to go in without changing in front of tons of strangers and salespeople, but in the end, it was just easier to join the dozens of other girls in their underwear in the aisle who were also trying on gowns. I thought I would feel more self-conscious but everyone was focused on their own thing.

Although the lighting was horrible, I wanted to give you a sense for the dresses I was trying on - as these were sample sizes, most were a little too big:


It was also a pain in the butt to get into some of the dresses, as the skirts were full enough to stand on their own and there were all sorts of complicated sets of zippers and straps:

For fun, I tried on a Carolina Herrera gown with a full skirt - you can't tell from this picture, but that sucker was huge! I felt like Martha Washington (I don't know why that's the first comparison I thought of!):

The skirt was beautiful but definitely confirmed that I didn't want something too poofy:

The funniest line I overhead amongst the racks was one girl telling a friend that the sale was like "Princess World" since there was so many beautiful dresses to try on.

So, the best thing is that I did end up buying a dress at the sale. I'm not 100 percent that it's the one, but it was so beautiful and such a good bargain that I couldn't pass it up. I'm still going to check out some bridal dress shops to try on dresses but I may already have my wedding gown (which will need alterations, a new zipper and a cleaning). I can't post a picture of it, as Andrew reads this blog, but it was beautiful enough that I got compliments from strangers as I was wearing it.

Overall, I thought the sale was a great experience, and something that every bride should try out even if they don't end up with a dress.