Packham envy

My fellow South African blogger, SexyRedFrame, got married this last Saturday, and she looked gooorgeous! Go see. The reason I'm bringing it up is because of her DRESS. Wow, what a stunner. I looked, I marvelled,I said "wow", and I closed her blog. A few minutes later, something was niggling at me. There was something familiar about that dress... I went back to her blog and read pretty much the whole damn thing to find the bit where she chose her dress, so I could see what it was, and, hopefully, see a better picture of it.

Well, there was a picture. A very familiar picture! I immediately went into my well-hidden "dresses I love" folder, which I saved within a folder within a folder within a folder with nothing to do with weddings, so that Mr Ruby Slippers wouldn't ever find it. I hadn't looked at that folder since I ordered my dress in February/early March, but before that, boy, did I look at it twenty times a day!

And there it was. The Jenny Packham Papillon:


I'd saved it in a folder with only 37 other dresses. That's, like, three in bridal terms. :-) I loooved this dress. But Jenny Packham doesn't happen here in SA, and unlike RedFrame, I couldn't go to the States to try on designer wedding gowns. So I must own up to the tiniest bit of jealousy that Sexy RedFrame was able to wear such a stunning dress...and she definitely looked waaay more gorgeous than I ever would! I think you might need to be tall and willowy to pull off that dress, and I'm....not.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my dress, and people told me all night how beautiful it was and how gorgeous I looked in it (best night of my life, that!). I just still can't help wishing that I'd had more variety to choose from, just in case. For instance, in South Africa, all the wedding gowns are a variation on these four standards:

(These are actual dresses from Bride & Co, where I bought my dress)

The A-line with side gathering:


The pick-up skirt:
The frou-frou ballgown:
The slightly mermaid:
And that's it. I did see a couple of sheaths back in the day, but they're all gone now.

I will say that looking at their website, which has been completely restocked since Feb/March, they have a much wider selection of split-front dresses than before. I had two to choose from. There are now six (but the one I didn't choose has vanished). Oh, and my dress has gone up by TWO THOUSAND RAND. I don't earn a lot, but that's more than a third of my monthly salary. Thank you very much, economic crisis. I'm so glad Mr RS proposed when he did!

HOWever, back to the point, which is that the kind of flowy, pretty Jenny Packham/Claire Pettibone dress I was loving online was (and is) nowhere to be found! Aside from the Papillon, these are some of the images I fell in love with:






That scrumptious, flowing, empire-waisted period look was one I just could NOT find here. Now, frankly, I don't believe I could afforded a Jenny Packham dress anyway. But a little bit inside me just wishes I'd had the OPTION, you know?

I've loved this style of dress for years. Everytime I saw "My Fair Lady" (And I've seen it a LOT) I would swoon over the dress Audrey Hepburn wears to the ball (this is the best pic I could find of it without pulling out my dvd and taking a screenshot):

Drool. Envy.