Again, with our theme of keeping things local I made an appointment with Annette at Bliss Bridal wear in Swadlincote. I’d already visited her website and could see that she stocked a number of dresses, in varying age ranges, colours and styles so I thought I stood a good chance of finding something.
Initially I visited on my own to look at styles and colours. I picked out a lovely plain hunter green dress for my sister and the junior version of the dress for the two girls in an apple green colour. I tried to match, as near as possible, the colours that Simon had picked, hunter green for himself and a lighter green for his attendants.
I made another appointment to take my sister (Becky) and the girls to look at the dresses and try them on for size. What a waste of time that first visit was! We got to the shop and the girls immediately picked a different dress and wanted to try it on. I must admit though, I’d seen the dress on the first appointment and hadn’t really liked it.
However, once it was on, it looked completely different, it looked beautiful. My sister did look funny though – she’s only a size 10 and was trying on a size 18 dress. I have to say the bulldog clips holding the dress up didn’t do much for the look.
It wasn't all plain sailing though, as we found out that my step-daughter, Niamh, was a very tall 11-year-old and my daughter, Annie, is spot on with her age, 10. It’s funny to see them together, for saying there’s only 12 months difference in age.
Well, the girls were sold on the dresses, and I was sold too, although the dresses they’d picked were more expensive than the ones I’d chosen. I don’t know! Children these days have got expensive tastes, I’m sure I wasn’t like that at their age.
They chose a different colour too so we settled for hunter green for my sister’s dress and pistachio for the girls’.
Whilst we were looking at bridesmaid dresses, Simon was getting his son, Andrew, 16, and my son, Allan, 11, kitted out in their wedding suits over the road at Jon Paul Formal Hire.
I had to get my sister to run over to Jon Paul’s with a colour sample so they could match up the colour of the boys’ cravats with the colour of the girls’ dresses.
I’d left the dress buying a bit late, if I’m honest as I bought the dresses at the end of March and they won’t be here until early July. It doesn’t give us much time to get them altered but I’ve been assured the seamstress next door to Bliss will work her wonders and have them ready for us.
