How many times will I post about this, right?

For those of you who don’t know, I am obsessed with shoes. They are the cherry on the top of every outfit. I am also incredibly finicky about them. As soon as I found my dress (which was six months ago, believe it or not) I started daydreaming about the shoes that I would wear with it. They had to be perfect and budget friendly and appropriate and tall and comfortable and basically magical. This made them pretty hard to find.

After a lot of searching around I found a beautiful pair of gray Nine West heels that were PERFECT on Ebay. They arrived quickly and were even better in person. They were dove gray and fit like a glove, girl.

So. Skip to three months later.

When I went to pick up my dress a couple of days ago I made sure to bring all of my accessories so that I could see everything all put together and finalized.  It’s important to mention that getting alterations done on my dress was a huge fear of mine. My dress is made for someone who is 6″0 tall and I am 5″0 on a good day. If my dress had a simple skirt and hem it would have been one thing, but as you have seen by now, my dress is nothing but appliques and embroidery and bead work. When I went for my initial fitting TWO seamstresses were fussing over the hem, trying to figure out how to take the extra 7,000 feet of fabric off of the bottom of the dress without messing with the integrity of it. It was a stressful time. (#eyebags.jpg)

It took my seamstress a FULL four weeks to finish altering my dress. What she ended up doing was taking all of the appliques off of the bottom of my dress. She cut the excess length off, carefully avoiding as much of the embroidery as she could. Once the length was right, she sewed everything back on by hand and re-did the beadwork. It was not a small job. And it looks amazing. But there’s a problem. It is still half an inch too long.

When I tried on the dress and came out of the fitting room to my waiting mom and sissy, I held it up to walk around. When I tried not to– my beautiful dove gray shoes trampled all over the hem. There are a couple of reasons that this happened: I was looking down at my modest four inch heels while I was walking (making the dress a little longer) and the dress was hemmed a little longer because of where the embroidery is placed.

When we realized that the length was going to be a problem our options were limited. We could either re-alter the dress (another solid four weeks) OR I could get bigger shoes. It’s not easy to guess which option I went with. I walk in platforms ALL THE TIME. I dance around in platforms ALL THE TIME. I am five foot tall so I wear platforms ALL THE TIME! No problems, bro!

I just needed to go and get a pair of slightly taller shoes and we are right as rain!

The morning that my mom left to head back home we decided to get breakfast in this little shopping center where I happened to notice a shoe store going out of business. SCORE! Everything was basically gone– but I DID find a pair of taupe heels that are lovely. They were twenty bucks, slightly taller than my gray doves and great. I bought them! I came immediately home!

…still trampling all over the hem.

The taupe heels are final sale. So I just have to add them to my collection. No problem! I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon (meaning I cancelled a couple of other appointments) to find a pair of shoes that would work for my dress. I went to six different places finding heels that were sky high but not the right color. The right color but kitten heel. Perfect but three hundred dollars. So on and so forth. I eventually found a pair of platform heels that are really lovely but patent leather (which I generally dislike) but I got them because they were budget friendly and interesting.

I got them home and the color is all wrong.

They will work if I can’t find anything else– but they aren’t perfect. I’m beginning to think that this is one of those things where I am going to have to remind myself that in fifty years I’m not going to think back on my sub-par shoes on my wedding day. (OR WILL I?!)

There’s also the issue of my house and…um…shoes in my house. I REALLY like shoes, you guys. And Napkin and I are REALLY trying to sell our apartment. Whenever someone requests a showing of our house we have to move things around in order to make the house look more spacious.

“Selling Tip Number One: De-clutter. Remove the majority of personal items from your home so that potential buyers focus on the space, not your belongings.”

Well. This is what we have to deal with every time somebody requests a showing. Ahem.

Oh, that’s not all.

 

…why, yes. That is a laundry hamper full of shoes.

 

…And that’s not all of them either. We also have a shoe rack at the front door that we use. Do I have a problem, you guys?

…

OH! And for your consideration, here is my wedding shoe collection. If you have any preferences, lemme know.

(Yes, that’s a pair of knock-off of Jeffrey Campbell Litas. DON”T JUDGE ME, OKAY?)