Shopping for Bridesmaid Apparel

I'm in my friend Donya's wedding in early October and she's one of those kindly brides who does not require her closest friends of all different shapes and sizes to wear the same cheaply made over priced bridesmaid dress. (Thank the shopping gods.)

Our only directive for our bridesmaid apparel is that we are to wear brown dresses. It should be quite pretty in October, the four of us looking like a box of assorted Godivas. Picking out my own dress, however, is not as easy as it might sound. I have a hard time making up my mind. And I didn't start looking until summer time, during which there is not a great deal of brown to be had. The other night I actually had an unpleasant naked-in-front-of-everyone anxiety dream about having nothing to wear to the wedding, so I figured I better get on the stick and step up the shopping pace.

Good old Nordstrom--you can search their dress shop by color (as well as occasion and body type). It's a real time saver. So last night I ordered six dresses. They offer $5 shipping for any order, so I figure I didn't have to invest much for a private brown dress shopping session in my own room. (They're opening a Nordstrom at the Mall near me, but I'm not sure when. It's replacing Parisian which was sort of ick. Well maybe ick is too strong. But it was definitely not a Material Girl store. My mother-in-law shopped there a lot.)

So here are the dresses I ordered. I'll let you know which, if any, I end up keeping. They're all different brands (left to right, top: Shelli Segal, Calvin Klein, BCBG; left to right, bottom: JS Boutique, Cachet, Tadashi).