A Tale of Two Dresses: Part I

I had not really thought about what my wedding dress would look like until I got engaged. At that point, I envisioned a dress that was not too form fitting, but not too "poofy". With this in mind, I began casually browsing through dress sites online. I guess I should also add that the thought of dress shopping scared the living daylights out of me. I really don't like attention brought to me. at. all. So the vision of somebody waiting on me hand and foot while I dressed and undressed, and then proceed to stand in front of a mirror, in front of other shoppers made me a tad uncomfortable. Finally, after my mom, sister, FMIL, and I attended a bridal show in September, I bit the bullet and made an appointment here. So when the day of my appointment arrived, I expected only the worse. However, I was actually pleasantly surprised that it really was not so bad to go shopping for a dress. My mom, sister/MOH and I had an appointment on a Friday afternoon, so there wasn't anyone else in the store at the time and the woman who helped me (Amy) was the sweetest person ever. I highly recommend her to anyone shopping at the south Austin location. I think I tried on about 12 dresses that afternoon- which took a total of three hours ( I can't believe it took this long, so fyi to all future brides who are about to dress shop: make sure you have lots of time!). There was one dress that everyone agreed on. I liked it best out of all that I had tried on and since I hadn't planned on shopping elsewhere, I thought it was "the one". I liked that it was simple and satisfied my "vintage desire" with buttons flowing down the back. I wasn't too thrilled that it required a crinoline and it was a little more "poofy" than I had originally envisioned, but it seemed like a wedding was the only day I could get away with wearing a "princess-style" dress, so I didn't think it was something I would worry over too much. I didn't get that "this is the one" feeling, but since I hadn't expected to feel that, I wasn't disappointed.
A few weeks later, I found out they were having a sale, so I joined my mom and sister/MOH to try the dress on one more time and decided to order it. For your pleasure, a sneeky peeky (Mr. Beagle, close your browser, NOW):

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Who knew buying a dress could be so easy... right? How long did it take for you to find your dress?