Demetrios is probably the designer I've had the most luck with overall, including my beloved Maggie Sottero. I found them in a magazine and subsequently checked out their San Diego flagship store way back in 2008. During that trip, I found A LOT of dresses that fit the description of what I was looking for really well. Though none of them particularly stood out to me, having such an awesome selection helped me narrow down my preferences so that I knew exactly what I was looking for when I found it in the Private Label dress.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I found another massive Demetrios store in Schaumburg, IL and decided to check it out while visiting Daniel's family (FIL's family almost all live in the northern Chicago suburbs). Now, this was the day before I was planning to go back to Eva's Bridal and possibly buy my Monalisa dress. I guess it's good that I went to Demetrios first because I fell in love with a very different kind of dress.
Meet my new obsession with peek-a-boo lace! There were two dresses in particular at Demetrios that I would seriously be considering buying if I could afford them.
(ignore the jacket thingy)
All right, so the second one is not quite actually the dress I tried on, but it's similar. The major difference between the two I tried on was that the latter was satin anyway which I definitely prefer.
ANYWAY, so remember how I was saying that I was surprised to love a lacey dress? Well, most of the lacey dresses I had seen before this were modern. As in, chic and slim. Not my type. But these dresses combined the princessy look that I love (including a full skirt, beading, and a waistline that's actually at the waist) with the more modern (or vintage depending on how you look at it) lace with asymmetry in the skirt. I always had a thing with skirts that pulled to the side, but these were the first ones I'd seen that really seemed to work. Same goes for the flowers on the skirts. It still had the normal skirt over the lace (one even had my beloved pick-ups) which I liked, but the lace was just there peeking through. Me likey. Especially because there was a full lace skirt underneath instead of just enough to show on the side. Which is probably why I can't afford these dresses. Sigh. I also really liked the bustle which is like a complete revelation for me as I generally hate bustles (thus my love of pick-ups that hide them). They could just pull the extra skirt to the side. Looked quite awesome.
Anyway, the point is that this really threw me for the next day which is part of why I decided not to buy the Monalisa after all. Now I have no idea what I want, so I guess I'm going to have to keep trying on dresses. Soooo tragic, I know.
Actually, I kind of do have an idea of what I want to do now. Still not 100% sure whether I'm going to go for a dress that was more like the super princessy ones I was going for originally or if I'm really going to pursue peek-a-boo lace, but I have sort of come to a decision about how I'm going to obtain my dress.
See, I've known from the beginning that designing my own dress would be the best way to go for me. At first, I figured that would be way too expensive to even consider. When I discovered that it's actually cheaper to hire a seamstress than to buy a designer gown (even one of the cheaper designers), I started thinking about it, but I wasn't really serious about it because I figured it would be extremely difficult to find a good one.
But now, I'm really starting to think that's the way to go for me. You might have figured out by now that I am extremely picky when it comes to dresses ("What? No, never," you say before rolling your eyes behind my back), and I really do want my dress to be perfect. So I think my best option is to pick apart different dresses, grabbing a bodice here, a skirt there, a train down that-a-way, and have someone sew them together into something that really fits me.
Do I feel bad about essentially stealing a dress idea? Yeah, kind of. But the thing is, if the designer wouldn't make a custom dress for me anyway, and I don't like one dress enough to buy it, then it doesn't really feel like stealing. I mean, I'll definitely be making changes to the design no matter what, so my conscience should be clear...right? Besides, this is looking like the only way for me to find my dream dress unless one magically appears during my dress hunt (which I'm still hoping for).
So this is the current plan: keep looking; if I haven't found something by, say, October, hire a seamstress, and create my own dream dress.
Thoughts? Good idea? Bad idea? Anyone know a really good seamstress in Southern California?
I think it's a great idea if you can find a really good seamstress. I'd be weary if I wasn't sure I'd be getting 5-star work from someone I don't know too well.
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