The Color Purple - It's Difficult

You've seen some mentions here and there of my bridesmaids, and in total I've got five of them.  There's my sister, MOH Curls, Sphinx's sister, BM Dino, and my friends BM Perk, BM Taco, and BM Duffy.  These girls are my nearest and dearest and have been big parts of my life through some different stages, and I am so thrilled that they want to take part in the Pyramid wedding.

From the get-go, I wanted to make sure that their bridesmaids dresses didn't suck.  Pretty reasonable, I think.  Oh, and I didn't want them to be expensive, please and thanks.  So one of the first things I did was to start a group Pinterest board and started pinning some ideas of styles I liked.  Currently, we are all living four separate cities and by the time the wedding rolls around, that will be five, so we have that working against us.  We couldn't go do a shopping trip altogether, and whatever we chose had to be accessible for everyone.  We're also dealing with a variety heights, sizes, and skin tones, so I thought that having everyone's input would be useful.

One option would have been to allow the girls to all pick separate dresses with some guidelines on color and style, but I wasn't sure that was the look I was going for.  I was drawn to the look of different necklines on similar dresses in the same fabric and color.

Lovely gunmetal dresses with different necklines. /Dresses by Freja Designer Dressmaking/Photo by Vanishing Moments Photography

Then everyone was able to wear something that is comfortable and flattering, but it still remains a cohesive look.



I came up with some guidelines for the look and the very first was short dresses.  May + the Deep South + outside photography does not add up to an event for long dresses.  I also find shorts to be cuter and more fun, and the girls were on board with it.  Apparently the idea of short dresses at a nighttime wedding made some family members clutch their pearls in horror, but I pulled the "It's What We Want" card and moved right along.

Hand in hand with that, I decided that I didn't want chiffon dresses.  They're very popular and very flattering, but I just didn't like how informal short dresses would be in chiffon.  I also didn't want anything that was too stiff or uncomfortable like a tafetta or a heavy satin.

For the color, I wanted a deep, eggplant or plum purple.  It's one of the wedding colors, it's one of my favorite colors, and we have several LSU alums in the bridal party.  But the right shade of purple is tough.  It's a hard color to photograph, and can come off looking almost black sometimes, but I thought the jewel tone color would look flattering on everyone's skin tone.  If we weren't able to find a satisfactory purple, I would turn to neutrals like navy, gray, or black.

Like this shade of purple./Found on Bridal Guide/Photo by R.E.M. Video & Photo

So I searched out online - Allure, J. Crew, David's Bridal, Ann Taylor, Dessy, Mori Lee, Alfred Angelo. I opened each webpage with high expectations because in all of those pages of dresses, there had to be one that would work for us!  Most of the time I ended up disappointed - nothing really stood out.  Even on more expensive sites, there wasn't anything that was so great that I'd ask them to pay that price.  I found myself asking again and again, "Why do bridesmaids dresses have to be so darn ugly?"  Okay, so they aren't all ugly and obviously we don't all have the same taste, but you've got to admit that there are some bad options out there!

We played around with the idea of finding a dress on ModCloth or at Macy's and just ordering it for everyone, but with the necessary sizes and color we couldn't find anything.  Seriously, it seemed like nothing came in purple.  Where is the purple love, fashion designers?

So we stuck to officially labeled "bridesmaids" dresses, since the sizes, color options, and large areas of distribution worked to our advantage.  They're also available for a lot longer than a typical dress on the rack at a store is, although I would have loved for that option to work out.

Here are some of my favorites that just didn't work out for one reason or another.

Mori Lee Style 31012

Lela Rose Dress LR175 on Dessy Group

After Six Style 6644 on Wedding Shoppe, Inc.

Wtoo Dress #450

I LOVE this dress, but it only came in black or white./Mori Lee Style 31001

My initial idea was to use both the second and third dress, and let the girls pick which style they wanted.  But those are two different brands, and don't come in the same color and they were both a little more expensive than I was comfortable with.

Overall, I liked the look of a slightly full skirt and some extra detailing such as lace or an illusion neckline.  The church doesn't require straps on the dresses, but I liked those options because they were a little bit different.

Next time I'll show you what we finally decided for the dresses!

Did you find it hard to pick out bridesmaids dresses? Did you have the girls give you input or pick them out for themselves?