Finding "The One"

Even now, late at night, as my house sleeps around me, I hear them.  Their wise voices, mystically chanting:

"You will just know."

"It will feel right."

"The One will find you."

I'm not talking about finding true love.  No, if only it were that easy.  I'm talking about finding............THE dress.  Maybe if I was one of the $10,000 dress budget girls on "Say Yes to the Dress," the task would be easy.  For $10k, lots of great dresses will happily find you.  For budget of $400 or less (preferably much, much less), I am resigned to consign, haunting Craigslist, oncewed.com and my favorite consignment boutique, LaBella Bridal.  I keep looking for "new" dresses at each, hoping that my size, ever-changing taste and budget will one day align. 

The first dress I tried on, back in February, was an Alvina Valenta beauty (left), made of duchess silk with hand-sewn details.  Don't let the picture fool you-- put on a real-live person, steamed and with crinoline, GORGEOUS.  And, sadly, $450 out of my price range.  Also, I was not sure if I wanted to be quite that, well, fancy or buy the very first dress I tried on. 

A wedding planner advised me that if it was question of a few hundred dollars, I could make that up somewhere else in the wedding, like the favors.  Which is solid advice, except that keeping my costs down is SO important to me.  I just don't want to feel wasteful.  On the other hand, I am beginning to be wasteful of my time, as I keep searching for The One. 

My latest trip to LaBella resulted in conflicting favorties from each bridesmaid, and support for EVERY dress from a very nice group of women there for their own dresses.  They provided a lovely ego boost, but did nothing for my confusion.  The bride in their group bought a dress that, quite frankly, made ME start to cry even though I didn't know her from Margaret Thatcher.  I'd overheard her mom say they had been searching for quite awhile, but that this dress was The One.

Anxious for guidance, I asked her how she had found it.  "I tried on a hundred dresses.  I even bought another dress.  But I put this one on, and I just knew."

So far all I know, is this dress finding is more work than it should be.  I do have Plan B, the $100 Ebay dress.  It is actually lovely, an Alfred Sung chiffon A-line with a sweetheart neck.  (Ha, I knew NONE of these terms a few months ago!!)  But, it's just not........The One.  Still, I'm about ready to  let it be the one I end up wearing so I can move on with my life.