Francey Pants: The Ballad of the Flower Children

July 8, 2011

The Ballad of the Flower Children

After much trauma, drama and strewn flower petals, I've decided I'm finally emotionally ready to relay the saga of the Flower Girl Dress Crisis of 2011.

Usually the dress stress at a wedding revolves around either the bride or the bridesmaids. Not so in my case; I ended up purchasing the third dress I tried on the first time I went looking. And my bridesmaids were in and out of Flutter in approximately 1.5 hours-- each happy with the dress she had chosen for herself. There were no fights. No tears. Just hot booties in dresses they liked, praise Moses.

I started probing the minds of FG stakeholders way back in January, offering up adorable little numbers like this:


(Via here)

And this:

(Via here)

Not wanting to be a bridezilla, I asked said stakeholders to thrown in their two cents as well, like I've done with all my other wedding planning. This led to literally dozens of dresses thrown into the mix, until we finally settled on this one in mid-March:

(Via here)

I thought I had this all squared away and could check it off my list, but then the universe bwa-ha-ha'd in my ear and said, "NOT SO FAST, SONNYJANE!" You see, I had three flower girls ranging in age from 6 to 11, and it turns out most flower girl dresses are made for those on the younger end of the spectrum. The sizes on ye above adorable dress do not extend to that of a pre-teen. So. Back to the drawing board.

Thirty-five emails later-- many exchanged while I was vacationing in Berlin and subsequently cut off from the world for a week in Digoin with no internet so I had to sneak into the teachers lounge every day to check my email for 15 precious minutes-- we settled on a new dress. On May 5, this is what we ordered for my three little princesses in ivory:

(Via here)

Then, last weekend, I was at the Dude's house while his stepdad's nephew's family was visiting. His 5-year-old daughter communicated to me in no uncertain terms that she was upset that she was not a flower girl too. Her grandma has been our brooch bouquet wizard, and most recently has created the most adorable little flower girl brooch bouquets known to man or beast. I could understand how watching her make those bouquets for three little girls who were not her would sting, and due to extraneous hormonal factors, this broke my heart and kept me awake all night with shame.

The next morning I asked her if she would please be my fourth flower girl. She said, "I GUESS! If you're SURE you WANT me." I told her I was very sure, and since she was on her way Up North for the week, we looked at David's Bridal website and chose an outfit we could get ready for her in her absence. She definitely wanted purple or pink, NOT ivory, and was quite enamored with the sparkle shoes we saw. This is what we ended up getting her:

I thought it might look a little funny next to three ivory-clad FGs, but to heck with it!

Back to my original three. We had been promised by the bridal shop we ordered from back in May that the dresses would arrive the last week of June or the first of July. It was a bit close for comfort, as we were fairly certain we'd have to alter them, but we'd make it work in time for The Big Day on July 23. Except. Fate decided to screw with me again, and when FMIL called them on Wednesday she discovered that two of the dresses were in New York and one was in China. CHINA. In all likelihood, floating somewhere along the Yangtze River. The proprietress was vaguely confident we'd get them by next Thursday, leaving us one week and one day to alter them if we needed to. If they came in at all, that is.

This. Would. Not. Fly.

We moved on to Plan B, which involved frantically calling all the David's Bridals in a 100-mile radius to see if they had dresses in the sizes and colors we needed, and plucking my adorable first-cousins-once-removed from their summer activities for an emergency shopping trip with their grandma (my aunt).

Long story slightly less long, we found dresses in our color scheme that will need a few alterations, but Will Work. Most importantly, the girls felt confident and beautiful in their new frocks, and couldn't stop twirling around the store in them. Turns out everyone hated the dress we ordered, so this is all for the better. Perhaps the universe knows what it's doing after all.