Swanky bridesmaids dresses in regular AND plus sizes?

Dear ESB,

In June I am going to marry the totally awesome man of my dreams. He is SO awesome that he is even letting me pull off a ridiculous vintage circus inspired wedding, and has agreed to all my planning requests (Giant giraffe backdrop, tons of balloons, yard games, etc.) We even had a fun carnival themed engagement shoot.

I am having a ton of fun making crafty things and executing all of my plans, not feeling stressed about any of it.... Except regarding what the bridesmaids should wear.

I have three best ladies, and they are the raddest three ladies around. They are all smart and sexy, and have great individual style. While I am fine with them choosing their own dresses, they have decided that they still want to coordinate, and are hoping for something brightly colored, or sparkly, or vintage inspired... (In other words, something that will fit the wedding theme and make them look awesome).

We thought it would be easy for them to find coordinating dresses that they loved and looked good in. However, my MOH is a size 14-16, Future sister in law is a size 22-24, and my bestie cousin is a size 6. The four of us have been searching for MONTHS and haven't found anything that is even remotely attractive and available in BOTH standard and plus sizes.

Any chance you and your awesome audience can help us out?

sadly,
Circus Girl

*****

1. "vintage inspired" doesn't actually really mean anything. (more on that tomorrow.) i mean. are you going for the 1890's? the 20's? the 50's? you realize that ALL CLOTHES are inspired by the past, right??

2. RACHEL PALLY ALL THE WAY. These colors/patterns are circus-y enough for me. And definitely inspired by a vintage.

More importantly, RP makes excellent plus size dresses that coordinate beautifully with her main line.

I'll shut up about Rachel Pally now. And you can all stop asking me for bridesmaids dresses! kthxbye

Top photo by Frederick W. Glasier via Vintage Vivant

I've solved your bridesmaids dress dilemmas

Okay, April has solved your dilemmas.

Rachel Pally has MANY very excellent styles and colors in the $140-250 range, and some of em are half off right now. (Or: Sign up for Rachel Pally emails and receive 20% off your first regular price order.)

She's also got bridesmaids jumpsuits, just fyiz.

A Wedding in Polaroids

And the most thorough, thoughtful, helpful write-up I have yet had the pleasure of publishing.

Take it away April:

Sitting down to write about our wedding seems an awful lot like an Academy Award acceptance speech -- there were so many incredible people and friends involved. I'm about to start blurting out a list of names before the orchestra starts playing the STOP TALKING music.

About our wedding: it happened over labor day weekend in a small town 2 hours north of San Francisco. Monte Rio is beautiful, remote and very California without having the expense of nearby wine country. The ceremony was on a meadow by the Russian River with the reception at the community center. We treated it like it like a destination wedding.

Besides our own marriage, here's what we wanted for our guests:

- to have a relaxing long weekend on the river.
- to enjoy themselves so much that they were really sad when the weekend was over.
- to leave feeling like they really got to know other people and made new friends.
(To that end we created a Facebook group to organize lodging, communicated on our save the dates that guests needed to book lodging pronto and gave people the resources to find rental houses together. We also created a custom google map with important location and people's rentals.) As far as we know, success!

Long term, WE owe the photographers, big time. We didn't have a pile of cash to burn, so we decided early on to spend on what was important to us. Pictures last forever, right? We wanted the photographs to represent the time we had that weekend and Chloe Aftel did just that. Bonus: she is hilarious and a joy to work with (she did our engagement shots too). She does magical things with Polaroids and captured the romantic, ephemeral parts of marrying someone you love. Waking up the day after the weddings and flipping through the prints was immediate gratification! We had another photographer manning the photo booth during cocktails -- Meg Messina took fantastic wedding guest portraits.

Finally, a shot of gratitude to Jennifer Tipton. She came on as the wedding day coordinator but she was indispensable long before that. She was wonderful to work with and  was on top of everything during the weekend.

The dress: it was St. Lucia sample by Jenny Packham, purchased at San Francisco's Glamour Closet. This is the place to go if you want an expensive dress for half-price. Ideal for people who a) are motived bargain shoppers or b) don't mind if their dress has a few fix-it blemishes.
The headpiece: bought a couple but settled on the Mignonne Handmade - Nature Girl Halo in ivory.
The bridesmaids: almost all wore long, pale pink Rachel Pally. She designs with modal jersey, aka feels like pajamas.

The cake(s): we didn't want a wedding cake per se. We bought basically one of every cake from Miette. Beautiful/delicious/not $1000.

And finally, here's the rest of the Rad people/places/things near California's Sonoma valley....

Artistry by Alan: Oh my, those lashes! He comes from a Hollywood background and sat me down, did his magic and I looked like myself but flawless. What cinched it for me is he did make-up on the movie Clueless. HELLO 90's girl fantasy!
Brian Ho of Dreams in Audio: the best damn unwedding DJ we could've found (sf-based)
Fork Catering: food truck extraordinaire, tasty, local, fresh food.
Pinterest: I had an Inspiration and Final Wedding board to manage the look since our wedding decor didn't really have a strong theme besides what we liked.
Virb: hosted our wedding website! Easy and (more importantly) stylish.

The last note: we ended up with 12 kids/babies on the attending guest list(!). Besides reserving the playground adjacent to the reception site we also introduced the parents beforehand via email. We had a kid activities, made programs with a colorable illustration. One of my favorite parts of the reception was the kids smashing a Confetti System-style piñata we filled with toys and candy. It was joyful having them around!

OH, I cannot believe I almost forgot to mention my favorite wedding stress coping mechanism. No, not stress eating (close second!) — my favorite way to let of irrational impulses and wedding industry wackness out was by creating the Twitter account @BRIDEHULK. In the same vein as internet meme @DrunkHulk, you tweet the rage away. I did not man @BRIDEHULK myself, I enlisted the help of about 10 other brides who were also wedding planning last year. Most of us graduated out but there are still a couple friends who are getting married in 2012. I hope the tradition will live on and would be happy to share login information with others who find themselves fed-up with one too many staged wedding blog posts, difficult potential vendors and crazy-pants family drama.

Cheers!
April

(Chloe Aftel also took super gorg digital photos. A few of em are up over here.)