My wedding dress hunt began in Florida last April. I figured, getting married in Florida and living in New York, why worry about transporting a dress across state lines? I hit up six stores (I know, sensory overload!) and came away with a definite idea of what I liked, but no cliche ‘aha’ moment.

I returned to New York thinking that I wasn’t one of those ‘aha’ sort of brides and I just needed to see all my options and make an educated decision. Little did I realize how wrong I was!

Just a week later was Spring’s Bridal Fashion Week and we were lucky enough to have the design geniuses behind brand new label Tulle by McNairy and Gual come into our office to show our fashion editors their first collection. As the PR team, we’re always investigating new designers for TV segments, so we were invited to view the collection too. Upon entering our fashion closet, I absolutely fell in LOVE with my dress. Even thought it was only a fashion preview, Lia and Antonio let me try the dress on and the rest is history. This was it, I had that moment. I had found the one.

While I’m the bride, and the wedding dress is pretty important, my groom’s got to look dapper too. I may have mentioned that Oren’s a tall guy before. Because of his wonderfully tall 6’7″ height, he didn’t want to rent a tux, he had to find something that would fit him perfectly. This left us with quite the quandary because tuxes can be pretty pricey.

Luckily, I came across this absolutely fabulous new company called Black Lapel. The company was started by two friends who used to work in finance. Back then, at their day jobs, they found it difficult to find well-priced suits that had a beautiful custom fit, so they started Black Lapel.

Every single suit is handmade to exact custom measurements and designs – the perfect duds for any groom-to-be! They even have handy videos on their site explaining what to measure and how. I couldn’t believe the number of areas that need to be measured (3 places on the arm alone!), this is guaranteed to fit well (no really, they actually guarantee it!). Oren and I are in NY where Black Lapel is based so we paid them a visit at their office, but if you’re not in NY, you can go through the entire process online!

Last week while I was home  in Chicago I had the much-anticipated task of wedding dress shopping.

For weeks, I had been nervous about these appointments. I didn’t have a clear idea in my head of what I was going to look like on my wedding day, so I went into these appointments blind.

My first appointment was at a boutique in Lincoln Park, Chicago called Weddings 826. The set-up was perfect for our first appointment since it is a huge room filled with bags and bags of dresses that we were able to pull right off the rack.

My mom and sister Hannah (my other sister Nellie was already back at school in Kentucky) came with and served as my panel of judges. We were told we had exactly one hour in the dressing room and so as soon as the timer started the three of us went crazy grabbing dozens and dozens of bagged dresses.

What I hadn’t really thought through was the fact that I had to undress with the dress attendant in the room. (So word to the wise, wear some good underwear.) It was a little awkward just standing there basically in the buff while she took each dress out of the bag — but after the first five dresses, I finally got used to it.

With every dress that I tried on we started to started to get an idea of what looked good and what did not. We quickly determined a few things that were not going to be a part of the winning dress:

A dropped waist:

Feathers:

Straps:

With all of the “no’s,” we were led to the ingredients that did work: strapless, sweetheart neckline, A-line, a long train, slight ruching, and an off-white color.

After three dozen dresses, I finally put on one that worked. It met all of my criteria and looked good. It needed a few additional alterations to make it the dress that I wanted, but I felt great in it. The attendant took my measurements, but I just wasn’t ready to bite the bullet after one round of tryouts, so we left for lunch and decided to sleep on it.

I wasn’t looking forward to Round Two of shopping the very next day. I felt like I had picked the winner and didn’t want to go through the entire ordeal again, but thankfully my mom pushed me to give it one more shot and so off to Volle’s in Lake Zurich we went.

We got to our room and unlike Weddings 826, the attendant picked the dresses for me after I told her what I had liked from the previous day.

The first dress I put on made us all certain that we were in for a tough decision. The dress was perfect. It was everything about the dress from the day before, but more. And it felt like me.  As I told my mom, “If I were a wedding dress, this is what I would look like”.

The attendant forced me out of the dress and into a few more, but after about six others I really wanted to put the first dress back on.

She clipped me in and told me to get comfortable in it. As my sister tried on bridesmaids dresses, I sat in my dress. I could move, dance, twirl — and I didn’t want to stop looking at the mirror. The dress is simple but classic, and is everything I didn’t know I wanted in my wedding dress.

I even got a little teary eyed as I stood on the pedestal looking at myself as a real bride. It was the first time since I’ve been engaged that I was truly overcome with the fact that I will be the one walking down the aisle on June 22, 2013 — and I’ll be doing it in this dress.