Contemplating Wedding Attire

As I was thinking about the wedding I need to find a dress for tonight, my mind wandered into the territory of weddings I've been in.  I have been in four, and despite the way Hollywood frequently shows women having to wear horrendous frocks as bridesmaids, I have not had to wear one that I didn't like.  I would have actually have liked to have worn all of them at least once again.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to wear more than one again before I gained too much weight to fit into it again.

I do not know if my good wedding attire run has to do with luck or with friends with really good taste.  Or maybe Hollywood over-blows the whole "horrendous dress" stereotype (highly possible).  I cannot really think of any bridesmaids dresses at any wedding I've been to that were horrendous, but it's entirely possible I've forgotten.  After all, I was there to see the bride and groom, not their wedding party (plus I haven't taken pictures at every wedding I've been to).

I happen to have a few of the dresses I've worn as a bridesmaid on my hard drive, so I thought I'd share.

Dress 1, 1996

It's not obvious form the picture because of my friend's hand, but it has an empire waistline.  That little bit of white you see on the sleeve is actually a rhinestone button embellishment.  It was either tea length or floor length and my favorite color.  I loved this dress.  I also love the bride's dress.  Yeah, she has good taste.  :)

Dress 2, 1996

I thought I had a picture of this one on my computer, but I cannot find it.  Maybe I'll have to find the hard copy and scan it later.  Oh, well.  It was a Christmas wedding, and the dress was dark green velvet with a matching satin bow on the back.  It was very basic, with a tea length skirt.  It was simple and elegant.

Dress 3, 1997

I do not have a picture of this one on my computer, but it was a floor-length black dress with a white v-shaped "collar" that went down to the navel and white lace over black fabric between the edges of the collar.  It was the one dress I wore for a fancy date night with my then-boyfriend, now husband, in 1998.  

Dress 4, 2003

This one all the bridesmaids got to vote on.  We went for something simple, and we chose this dress partly because it had an accompanying maternity version, and I was trying to get pregnant.  It was a basic dress in navy blue, and it was floor-length.  That's my mom with me in the picture.  (I had to crop out my hubby.  He's internet shy.)

So, was I extremely lucky, or have other people managed to never get a bridesmaid's dress they don't like?  If you've had some horrible ones, what was so horrible about them?

It's a Small World...

Apparently I wrote this in June but never posted it.  Well, better late than never!  LOL.

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I touched on this topic briefly in a previous post, "Chance Run-ins," but I always am amazed at the little coincidences that show me what a small world this big world is.  On my daughter's 8th birthday, there was more than one incidence that brought this to my mind.

The first incident was that I was talking to one of my Girl Scout co-leaders, and she mentioned that she used to work at the breast-feeding store that was close to our old house in another suburb, though still on this general side of town.  I used to go to this store when my daughter was a baby.  I only actually bought stuff a couple times, but I frequently went in to use the scale to weigh my daughter.  This was at the same time my co-leader worked there.  Not only that, but the mother of one of my daughter's classmates worked there at the same time, and I sort of remember someone fitting her description working there.

The second thing was a run-in at a restaurant.  Early in the day we were at the mall for my daughter to get her ears pierced.  A mother and her two daughters stopped to watch.  When we went to Black Angus for dinner, the same family was sitting a couple tables away from us.  They saw us returning from the bathroom and after both of our tables got birthday songs sung at them, the mother came over to ask if my daughter was the same girl she saw at the mall and to tell her how brave she was.  When we left the restaurant, we discovered we were parked next to one another--crazy, isn't it?

Whenever I discover these kinds of coincidences, I have to wonder if they mean something or if they truly are just coincidence.  After dinner, I couldn't help thinking back to other crazy coincidences in my life such as seeing a former classmate from Minnesota in a Florida airport or running into friends who lived near us at a mall an hour away from the house or meeting a girl in college who stayed at the same hotel in St. Thomas, VI, as I did approximately the same year as I went there.  It truly is amazing that in such a big world, we can have these sort of things happening.

What about you?  Have you ever had "small world" moments that made you wonder what it all means?