first entry for my fabulous/not-so-fabulous contest!

I've just started to hear from a few of you, but I know there's a lot more, so keep the responses coming! I will blog EVERY response, so everyone has a chance to win a beautiful 16x20 gallery wrap! The first entry is from Melissa. She looked absolutely gorgeous, but looking back has some second thoughts about her dress choice..........



"First, nothing was more exciting than putting on the wedding dress of my dreams. As I had my friends and family help me into my wonderful Kenneth Pool wedding dress, I felt like a princess. The beautiful satin shimmered perfectly, it fit like a glove, and I loved how the dress accented my mother's pearls going down by back. All this sounds just wonderful until I realized that I could barely fit into the antique Bentley I had rented for myself and my parents to take us to the church because my dress was so big! As my father squeezed all of my dress into the backseat (while it was raining), we configured that the only way for me to fit was to sit completely sideways which wasn't what I had in mind for the 40 min drive. I had a gut feeling at this point my dress would become a little problem for me during the day.





As the day progressed, the dress got heavier and heavier and my energy for holding it up got lower and lower. I was started to get pretty sore around dinner time because the weight of the dress was all positioned around my waist and I felt like an engine running out of steam. It was hard to move around on the dance floor, harder to eat, and harder to drink! I actually had to sneak downstairs into the ladies pampering room to take the dress off for a few minutes and breathe! I never thought I would have been in my undies for a few minutes during my wedding so I could catch a breather!!

If I could change anything or advice little brides out there on anything, it would be to pick a LIGHT wedding dress. The day is so much fun and you want to stay as active as possible! I would recommend getting a dress that doesn't weight that much. Honestly, I stepped on the scale with the dress on and I weighed about 18-20 pounds more than I normally do, eek! That's why I was so tired at the end of the day.

I wanted to keep on having fun, so I figured taking off the dress wasn't the end of the world, and I changed into sundress knowing that there had been a ton of great pictures of me in my wedding dress. Coincidentally, my dad forgot the white sundress that I wanted to change into afterwards, so I had to wear a different one.

Which leads me to my next piece of advice, don't sweat the small things that go differently than you planned. So what?, my dad forgot the white dress. When I asked him to put it into the limo, there were a million things going on around us, and he was probably just as nervous getting ready to take his daughter to the church to get married.

I just reminded myself to have fun, smile lots, and look around at all the people who love us. It's a pretty cool feeling and the best experience I have had in my life to date. "

I personally think she looks adorable in her sundress!! What do you think?