Monday, April 21, 2008

Showers and Flowers

On Saturday I went to a bridal shower of a good friend of mine. I didn't know any other attendees, other than the bride of course. It's always a bit apprehensive when you are planning what to wear to an event like this. I think the big challenge is that there aren't as many rules any more.

In the past you would know what to wear to events depending on what they were. But nowadays, it could be anything along the range of very casual to somewhat dressy. And given that I didn't know the group very well, I didn't have a gague on the types of folks the would be.

So I erred on the slightly dressier side. Given that it was a bit warmer and Spring, I decided to wear one of my new dresses. It was also a good comfort test run with the dress before I wore it to work for a full day. I have to say, I liked it a lot. I brought along a cardigan just in case it was chilly, but ended up not needing it.



I had been planning on pairing this dress with the new Franco Sarto gladiator-esque heeled sandals I had bought, but when I tried them on together, I just wasn't feeling it. So I ended up contrasting it with green because I was already using my green Dooney bag and I didn't have time (or interest, frankly) to change it.



So I ended up wearing my dark green Jimmy Choo Thunder slingbacks. The color went really well with the dress - both have muted shades.



I have a feeling that this will be a great dress for summer.



One thing I do want to do is get a good brown belt to go with it. I'm not usually a belt person so I don't have a lot of options. I think this dress calls for a good bold belt to break up the pattern and tie it back to the shoes. The fabric tie that came with it is in the same fabric and gets lost, plus it's a bit wimpy for the dress.

The bride-to-be was wearing a great dress. She got the sleeveless beach dress from JCrew but in a cute brown and white pattern they don't have on their site. It looked great on her and she also had some cute heeled thong sandals with some bit-looking hardware on it. She looked just smashing.

I had to return a shirt to Ann Taylor yesterday so I also popped into JCrew myself. I have been looking for a simple khaki pencil skirt and haven't really found one I liked. JCrew didn't have any but the did have a big sale going on with marked down items getting an additional 25% off. I ended up getting 3 dresses, including this swiss dot wrap dress in white, and a pair of patterned shorts. I'll have to take pictures because I can't find the rest online. But all of that came to well under $200.

I'm trying to get over my "fear" of dresses. I think they can be so pretty, I just feel like I need to be very selective about fit but still give them a chance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a very pretty dress!

Arlene,
Federal Way flowers

Anonymous said...

If you're looking for a simple khaki pencil skirt I recommend the Gap. I work there, and I know there are some pretty classic ones in the store right now (a black one too).
http://www.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=5730&pid=498546
Also, if you want a high waisted pencil skirt I know that's Express's "thing" this season.
http://expressfashion.com/products.jsp?category=Her&groupid=13&page=1
Happy hunting!

Poochie said...

Thank you Lia!

I will check those out! I just ordered a denim pencil skirt from Gap that I'm very happy with.

Luv
Poochie