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I never thought I’d start a fight with Billy Idol, but never say never, right?

As you know, Jake and I got engaged on Valentine’s Day. We want to enjoy our engagement time, so we haven’t set a wedding date. There are too many things up in the air right now for us to seriously book a venue, DJ, caterer, etc. However, my parents were in Phoenix for our engagement celebration. They live in Ohio, so since they were here, I agreed to go wedding dress shopping with my mom and Jake’s bro, Zach.

Something you need to understand about me … Although I have fantasized (vaguely) about my wedding day (exponentially more since I met Jake), I have never seriously considered my wedding dress. There are women out there—one of them being my gal pal Janine—who have known the precise dress they will wear down the aisle. As soon as these women get engaged, they buy their dream dress, because the dress has been waiting for them for years; why wait any longer?

After my David’s Bridal experience, I am jealous of these women, because my David’s Bridal experience taught me three things:
1) I look heinously chubby in traditional wedding dresses.
2) Zach looks better than me in most veils.
3) I look sickly wearing white.

Although item 2 is disheartening, items 1 and 3 are of much greater importance, considering I will soon be a bride, requiring a wedding dress, and I look terrible in most wedding dresses. My mother would argue this point; she thought I looked beautiful in a couple of the gowns. However, the problem is, I didn’t feel beautiful. And isn’t the bride supposed to feel beautiful on her big day?

I decided to do some research into the whole white wedding dress thing, and here’s what I found … Wedding dresses were not popularly white until 1840, when the British Queen Victoria wore a white dress for her marriage to her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg. (Do we really want to perpetuate a tradition founded in incest? Uh …) This famous people wearing white thing became the symbol of Hollywood when actress Grace Kelly married the Prince of Monaco in 1956 in a fancy, white gown. So the white wedding dress is fairly new.

I know what you’re going to say. There’s the image of purity that is associated with wearing white. Granted. But how many women in America can wear white as a sign of purity anymore?

Jake and I have discussed all of this, and he admits he prefers me in blue. Chinese women get to wear red. Gothic chicks get away with black. So what about me? How am I going to make this work? Although the trip to David’s Bridal was helpful, it certainly didn’t bring me any closer to finding the dress of my wedding dreams.

I’m starting to get ideas, but it’s going to be awhile before I find the PERFECT dress. I’m happy to know I don’t have to wear white. I’m sad to tell Billy Idol that his wedding song is no longer my favorite. I probably won’t be a traditional bride, but I’m gonna find a way to look good for my man—my soon-to-be husband—because Jake is too hot to have a chubby, sic