Along with stories that I never told during the wedding planning process as they happened, like our wedding venue hunt, and the story of our engagement and my engagement ring, I never elaborated on how I finally found my wedding dresses.
I told you about the evolution of my wedding dress hunt, and then how my wedding dress got lost about seven weeks before the wedding. But how did I recover from the lost wedding dress?
Well, once I realized that Saja was being really elusive about where my wedding dress was and when I could expect it, I, rightly so, started to worry.
My second choice wedding dress all along had been the JCrew Cecilia, which I had tried on at the Georgetown boutique. So, I was ready to buy that dress as a backup. But first, I went on Ebay to see if anyone was selling any JCrew Cecilia’s. Lo and behold they were! A size 16, brand new with tags, and for $225 instead of JCrew’s price of $495!
I used one of Ebay’s tools called “Make an offer” (I had never seen this before … different than bidding), and offered the seller $175 for the dress, and assumed we would settle in the middle at $200. Well, they accepted the $175 offer! My JCrew wedding dress shipped the next day.
But, one of the things I really loved about my original Saja wedding dress was the short length and the chiffon flowy-ness of it. After a quick search, I found this dress on Macys.com. At $139.99, I was all like, well, what the hell … and ordered it.
Both dresses arrived four days later on the same day. I tried on both and loved them both! I would wear the JCrew one at the ceremony and the Macys one for the reception (although I ended up only changing into it right before the first dance). I walked downstairs while wearing the JCrew dress and showed Ken. He was impressed too. So I was sold!
I was officially over my lost Saja dress. Of course, they wouldn’t refund my deposit because “all sales are final,” but they couldn’t even tell me when my dress would be arriving. Since they were already nearly a month late on delivery at that point, I filed a dispute with my credit card company. It took a few months, but the credit card company ultimately sided with me and provided a full refund of my dress deposit.
As I look at my wedding photos, I cannot possibly imagine having worn any other dress that day. They were both just so perfect. Simple and casual, but elegant for our fun campground wedding.
Sometimes accidents, like lost wedding dresses, are really blessings in disguise!
