One of the first times that Colin and I realized that we had waited too long to get married was when we discussed flower girls. When you’re getting married in your early to mid 20s you probably know a few little girls between the ages of three to five (in my mind prime flower girl ages). Maybe you have an older brother that is already married and has a daughter, or maybe it’s a first or second cousin, or maybe one of your friends had a child early – someone has a cute little girl who’s in that perfect range to be a flower girl. Problem is, when you wait until you’re in your 30s, you know about fifty* cute little girls who could be flower girls (side note – the same is true with ring bearers – as a matter of fact, between Colin and I we have three god sons and of course they’re all ADORABLE!) Needless to say, this plethora of good candidates makes the decision very difficult. But we did it.
We asked Halle to be my Junior Bridesmaid. I think that she assumed that she would be a flower girl, but she’s been a flower girl in like five other weddings, so I wanted to give her a more grown up role in our wedding, after all, she IS five now. Colin and I asked her and gave her a book called Mia the Bridesmaid Fairy. It goes through all of the responsibilities of being a bridesmaid. Since then she has read it and begun compiling a list of old things, new things, borrowed things, and blue things that she will make sure I have for the wedding. Halle is not the stereotypical five year old.
We also gave Gracee a book about being a flower girl when we asked her to be in the wedding. This request was a little more difficult because Gracee has an older sister who is also right around peak flower girl age. I think Sofia was a little upset when I asked Gracee and not her to be in my wedding, but Sofia had just been in the wedding of another of our cousins and it seemed like it should be Gracee’s turn.
Bad news is, after making this tough decision, (and of course choosing two of the cutest little girls EVER!) I come to find that there are more difficult decisions to make. This may sound silly, but choosing flower girl and junior bridesmaid dresses was probably the most difficult decision we’ve (see: I’ve) had to make in the wedding apparel category. When I first started looking I thought it was going to be very simple. Since Halle was a Junior Bridesmaid, she would wear the same dress as the bridesmaids, and I was already pretty sure of what I wanted for them – but when we finalized that pick, they didn’t carry that dress in little girl sizes. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
As far as Flower Girls dresses go – I’m not sure if you noticed, but they’re ALL cute! Do you know how hard it is to choose something when every single one of your potential choices are absolutely adorable? It’s hard. But I did know that I did not want a dress that looked like a mini-wedding gown. It creeps me out to see little girls dressed as adults (off topic kind of – have you ever watched Toddlers in Tiaras? If not, DVR it! It’s nuts!)
Luckily for me I had my genius mother there to come up with a solution to our problem…we decided to have a Flower Girl Fashion Show!
Now, Halle is five years old, but she’s quickly going on 21. She definitely has a mind of her own, I mean she wants to wear high heels for the wedding, asked for a purse as her bridesmaid gift, and already chose what hairstyle she wants – so I wanted to have her opinion on the dress she would wear. Unfortunately Halle hates shopping, but the kicker is that she LOVES playing dress up, so we had to make this into the ultimate dress up game.
I called the bridal boutique ahead of time to find out when then had a time where they would not be busy and we could have an area of the salon to ourselves and told her that I wanted to reserve a dressing room to try on flower girl dresses. When we got there Halle was shy at first, but when she saw the big dressing room, all of the mirrors, and most importantly all of the dresses…she was ready to go! We let Halle pick all of the dresses, some of them were a little over the top, but it was fun. We would put the dress on her and then have her do a walk out of the dressing room and unto the pedestal. Then she would spin in the mirrors and we would take tons of pictures – it was every girls dream! What a fun day.
Although we ended up ordering her dress online to save money, we had a great experience with Halle at the bridal boutique and I hope it’s something she’ll always remember. What a nice way to relieve a little pre-wedding stress! I recommend it to anyone who can fit it into his or her schedule!
Now, both of the girls’ dresses are ordered and I think that they are absolutely perfect for the wedding! Next order of business, finalizing invitation wording. Sigh.
Yours,
The Bride
*Footnote: This is an exaggeration. After writing this blog I realized that the idea of us knowing 50 cute little girls was kind of creepy. In reality, we do not know 50 cute little girls under the age of five, probably closer to ten. Just wanted to clear that up.
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