Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Shoesies for My Feetsies: The Beginning

I loathe shoe shopping.  My feet are small but wide, and it is a pain in the ass for me to find shoes that fit me.  As a result, my wedding shoes are not all that important to me.  I want something cute, but they don't need to be perfect, and I'm much more concerned about them fitting into the very small budget I allowed for them.

My requirements are mostly functional in nature and seemed simple enough when I laid them out:

1.  Straps:  My shoes need to be easy to dance in since we're not having a flip flop basket, and you can't take your shoes off at the reception.  Thus, they must stay on my feet.  I also feel like if you're going to spend money on shoes for a wedding, they may as well be comfortable.
2.  Small Heel:  Daniel is only 3 inches taller than me, and I'd really like to keep as much of that height difference as possible for the sake of pictures (don't judge me!).  We figured out that if he gets formal shoes with a rather large sole, the highest my heels could be is 2.5 inches.  Any more, and we start to look about the same height.  As I'm sure you ladies know, finding a heel that is only 2.5 inches is like looking for, not a needle in a haystack, but maybe a pocket knife.  That's been the biggest challenge in my shoe search.
3.  Heels:  For most formal events, I have no problem wearing wedges, and even though wedges or flats might make more sense for my outdoor, on-the-grass ceremony, I really want to go traditional on this one and wear actual heels.  Besides, I really need to acquire more heels, and buying wedding shoes is a great excuse.
4.  Easy to Walk in:  This probably goes without saying, but I don't want to be falling all over the place in my big, poufy dress.  Thus, these shoes need to be made for walking.
5.  Classy:  Like I said, I'm not the girl with 400 shoes in her closet.  Most of my formal shoes were purchased for events like prom and formals and such.  The rest of them were purchased because they were cheap (have I mentioned that Payless and I are super tight?).  For my wedding, I really want something that looks adult and stylish and not at all like a five-year-old.

At first I was like, eh, I'm not picky, this will be fine.  And then I started thinking about that list--classy, short heels that don't hurt my feet--perhaps not as easy as I had planned.

I pretty much started looking for shoes as soon as I got engaged because I knew they'd take FOREVER for me to find.  Since I knew nothing about shoes, I started my search online like a good little blogger, just to get an idea of what was out there.

I quickly fell in love with Nina.  These are some of the earlier shoes that I liked the look of:










 source 
As you can see, I kind of wanted a traditional shoe color in the beginning, and while I would never actually order any of these, they did help show that I like the side strap that pulls behind the heel.  To me, that looks classy and nice.

But it wasn't long before I left the online world behind and started casually scouring sales racks.  More to come on the search, including an actual purchase!

What were your shoes requirements?  Did you have trouble filling them?

1 comment:

  1. I didn't think shoes would be such a big deal for me either, but then they turned into this whole big thing, and I wound up choosing something completely impractical. I like those Nina designs, very appropriate for a wedding, that first one is so cute!

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