One of the next big decisions I made after we chose our venue, was finding my wedding dress! While I won’t be sharing my experiences or what I’ll look like on my wedding day (only a few people know what I’m wearing!), I am excited to share the details of shopping for a different dress — my bridesmaids’ dresses!

I am so lucky to have five beautiful girls standing by my side. Unsurprisingly, my sister is my Maid of Honor, and then one friend from high school youth group, a college friend,  and two friends I met when I moved to Richmond, complete my half of the bridal party. As grateful as I am to have them, I knew trying to find a time for all of us to be together would be hard, if not impossible. I crossed my fingers and prayed we would find a weekend for all of us to go together, especially since none of them really knew each other.

Before I even found my dress, I already had an idea of what I wanted my girls to be wearing. One of the first questions my gals asked me after I officially asked them to be a part of our wedding was “What are we wearing?”. While the shoe choice has changed over the years (ahem, cowboy boots), the look of the dress has remained relatively the same. I knew I wanted something, long, soft and romantic looking, while keep in mind that half of my girls are in other weddings this year. Here is a look at the style I was going for:

As you can see, I just loved how soft these gowns all looked! They pretty much all are strapless, which actually made me a little nervous, because I wasn’t sure how all of my bridesmaids were going to feel about that. I wasn’t against the idea of mix-matched dresses at all; we were doing it for my friend’s upcoming wedding and they look so great together! However, I didn’t trust myself to be able to pair all of the different styles together as well as she did, but I wanted to keep an open mind because I also really wanted my girls to love what they were wearing too!

After some thought, I decided to take the girls to the bridal boutique where I found my dress. It was a little bit of a drive, but the ladies there were fabulous to work with and they had a wonderful selection. As a bonus, I was even able to pull my dress and let them see it in person! We even found a date for all of us to go together, which was so surreal to see these wonderful women that have a huge impact on my life in the same room together. Unfortunately, my mom was unable to be there, as she unexpectedly had to fly to Florida to be with her dad, so I was a little disappointed she wasn’t going to be there to help us pick them out. Thank God for technology though – we were able to FaceTime during the appointment and having her opinion made the decision so much easier!!

I showed our consultant ideas of what I was looking for and then let my ‘maids dig through the racks and pull all of the dresses they wanted to try on. Some had straps, some didn’t, some were chiffon, some weren’t. After we pulled about 13 different dresses, the girls each grabbed on to try on. We all hemmed and hawed over the dresses, ruling some out and making a mental bookmark of the ones we liked. We continued this process until I found a dress that stopped me in my tracks. Everyone was in mutual agreement, and after all five girls tried it on, we held it next to my dress and celebrated checking one more item off the list!