I’m venturing into new territory with this post, but I felt inspired as I looked through pictures from my dear friend’s wedding. Bridesmaid dresses are always an interesting, sometimes polarizing, topic. The bride (usually) wants her maids to look and feel beautiful, but also has to marry (teehee) that with her own vision for the bridal party.

To make things even more difficult, the process of choosing a bridesmaid dress is no picnic either. It can be overwhelming to search through hundreds of styles, colors and materials just to get to a shortlist of options to try on. Then, on top of that, the lack of sizes and colors available forces you to choose a final dress based on a one inch square color swatch and a sample that could be three sizes too big. Oh, and let’s not even address the fact that these dress designers are playing some kind of sick joke on all of us ladies with their sizing. Whatever your dress size, in bridesmaid land you might as well add two sizes or more.

With all of these variables at play to produce a potentially disastrous experience, I feel its just as important to share when they all work together in perfect harmony! Gotta share the good to balance out the bad, right?

The good comes in the form of Love Lane, a ‘simple chic’ line created by Ivy & Aster. For this wedding, a few of us ladies ventured to Bella Bridesmaid in Bethesda and the bride, being wonderfully low maintenance and lovely, set us free to choose the dresses we so desired. We had eyed the Love Lane line prior to arriving, so we knew they’d be a contender, but once we tried them on, everyone was sold. The line offers seven dress styles and two fabric types in an array of colors, all available to view on their website. In our case, we were wearing dresses, of which there were three options, in one of three colors. I chose the Tori style in Champagne and couldn’t have been happier! Here is the dress picture from Love Lane’s website:

And a full length shot from the wedding:

So cute, right? It was a bridesmaid-frock trifecta: flattering, comfortable and it had POCKETS! It just doesn’t get better! Oh wait, it does. I forgot to mention it was under $200!

All three styles of dresses were extremely flattering and the colors went together beautifully. I’d highly recommend the line to any bride hoping for a classic but effortless look for her bridal party. I’d venture a guess that the line was designed to be mixed and matched as the dress styles all complement one another and the range of colors offer at least two options of every hue.

A few tips for any ladies considering this dress:

• The sizing of this line is a bit more forgiving than others, yet another reason why its so wonderful! I purchased the Tori one size up from my usual dress size, despite the saleswoman’s insistence that I go two sizes up, and it fit like a glove. I didn’t have any alterations, other than hemming, done to the dress.
• Like most bridesmaid dresses, these run long. It will likely require hemming and since there are three layers of fabric, instead of the typical two, it could be a bit more than a typical hemming job.
• For a small charge, you can order thick straps which can be a fun and functional addition for the reception.
• Like most bridal shops, all members of the bridal party must submit their dress order before the entire order can be placed. Make sure all bridesmaids are aware of the production time on the dresses so they don’t delay the order.

Now, the only catch is that Love Lane is available exclusively at Bella Bridesmaid stores, but with more than 40 locations it shouldn’t be too hard to find one near you. Trust me, you won’t regret it!