Dressing the 'Maids: Mismatched Inspiration

Having seen many a beautiful bridal party during my vast search for wedding inspiration, I knew from the start I wanted to aim for mismatched bridesmaids dresses. What could be more perfect than bridesmaids in gowns that fit their body shape, fit their budget, and coordinated in the most wonderful mismatched way? 

After I decided on the color palette in the early stages of wedding planning, I started to think about what color and style of dresses I wanted for my best ladies. Looking to my color palette for inspiration, I was immediately drawn to the idea of navy dresses, although blush pink and slate grey were still in the running. To get my 'maids input, I sent out a group text asking for their dress color preference, and all four ladies unanimously answered navy. Score! Naturally, I stalked Pinterest for some yummy mismatched navy bridesmaids dress goodness. 

Image by Brushfire Photography

Image via Style Me Pretty / Image by Michael Radford Photography

Image via Style Me Pretty / Image By Ashley Hoskins Photography

The next step was finding out what style each of my bridesmaids was drawn to, and what kind of price point they felt comfortable sticking to. While I know that these ladies would buy any dress at any price if they knew it's what I wanted and envisioned, I also wanted to make sure they also loved their dress and felt comfortable with the price. There's nothing worse than dropping hundreds of dollars on a dress you'll wear for 8 hours and then never wear again. The dress racks of Goodwill tell no lies.

I also had to figure out just how mismatched I wanted the dresses to be. Same exact fabric for each dress, but different styles? Completely different dresses with completely different fabrics? TOO MANY DECISIONS. After looking at tons of mismatched dress inspiration photos, the look I liked the most was same fabric in different styles. Making this choice also eliminated the "free for all" aspect of choosing the dresses and provided more guidance, which my girls appreciated. 

I told them to go ahead and start looking for dress styles they liked, and to start blowing up my phone with any and all of the dresses they felt particularly drawn to. After each 'maid showed me their "ideal" dresses, I saw that they had several similarities...strapless, knee length, and a chiffon or lace material. Again...score! This was shaping up to be way easier than I imagined.

Next...we shop! And things don't go exactly as planned...