I don’t know exactly when it first happened, but after my initial bout of dress research, I happened upon it. The perfect wedding dress style. All the dresses I had been looking at and planning on trying on were really pretty, but even my favorites still didn’t really feel like me. NEPA Groom and I are pretty casual people, in general. I wanted to feel like myself on my wedding day, just a more dressy version of myself. So imagine my delight when I saw one of these:

(again, NEPA Groom, you might want to avoid what’s next if you want to be surprised)

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While dealing with all of my dress anxiety was (and still is) an ongoing process, I did start looking at dresses online a few months before we got engaged. My lack of wedding experience meant that I didn’t really speak the dress language and didn’t really know what I wanted. I tried to put the negative thoughts in the back of my mind and just started looking at the styles of dresses that were out there to see what appealed to me, regardless of how unhealthy and thin the model wearing the dress looked.

I wasn’t looking to find THE DRESS!!!! at the moment, because God knows I’d fall head over heels for the one dress that only came in sizes 0-6.  So, that being said, here are some of the images I began collecting on my dress hunt (NEPA GROOM: If you want to be totally surprised, don’t look. Just warning you ):

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A few people have asked me about dresses, and while I keep telling people “one thing at a time”, I’ve been looking around a bit and tossing around a few ideas. I love the look of strapless wedding dresses paired with a cute little ruffly shrug. Particularly being a plus size bride, I’m not all about showing off tons of skin. Unfortunately, the wedding industry doesn’t seem to understand that. Dresses either show lots of skin, or end up looking old and frumpy. But just imagine a dress paired with this little bit of happy I found on Etsy:

There are tons of sites out there where you can buy a strapless dress. I was checking out dimitradesigns.com over the weekend and saw a bunch of designers I love, like Alfred Angelo. Wouldn’t this strapless dress look great with the shrug?

I’d be totally game for a dress like this with a shrug. So many of the cutest styles I love are strapless, so this may be the route I eventually go. How do you feel about strapless gowns? Are they no big deal or should larger brides have more options? If you know of any other good sources for shrugs, please comment!