Bridesmaids Dresses

I went to Chicago last weekend (United fixed their glitch, I was a nobody in Zone 5 :( ) to do some bridesmaids dress shopping and see some of my favorite people!  Alyssa and Shelby live in Chicago and two of the stores I've wanted to go to are located there so it seemed like the perfect place to do the shopping.  Whitney flew in from Columbus and unfortunately Lindsay's flight was cancelled due to the winter storm Nemo (over 2 feet of snow in the NE - Yikes!).  

I got in Friday night and met Whitney at Rock Bottom for a drink.  I can never go straight to bed after traveling! We stayed at the Courtyard River North which was a great location! I just searched for Marriott hotels that we could get a discount at and this one popped up - it couldn't have worked out better!

Saturday morning Shelby had the 3 of us over for brunch and mimosas at her apartment in River North.  She lives a few blocks from Michigan Ave and the stores we were going to so it was a good meeting place.  It was decorated so cute!

We went to J.Crew for our first appointment and I knew I would like the dresses. I've seen them in person at other weddings and I have always liked the silk chiffon styles I see online.  Since they only have 8 styles in silk chiffon, the three girls rotated trying those styles on.

We left the store an hour later with our eyes set on the v-neck short Louisa dress and the long Arabella dress.  

Our next appointment was at Bella Bridesmaid (they have stores all over the US but each one is owned individually and the designers they carry at each location vary).  Whitney and Alyssa had been here before for bridesmaids shopping so they knew the drill.  We ended up finding the final dress here! It's a long, navy, silk chiffon strapless gown by Love Lane.  They only had it in green in the store - which was beautiful on all the girls as well!  We need to get all the dresses ordered by the beginning of March to guarantee a July delivery.  Seems a bit crazy to me! 

Whitney and I decided to continue shopping down Michigan Ave after lunch.  Neither of us had been shopping on the tourist filled street in years - we usually avoid it.  Patagonia was having a sale so I picked up a wine colored fleece for 40% off.  I also found a necklace to wear with my LBD next weekend for Eric and Orchid's engagement party in Michigan.  Such a steal from Francesca's!

We went to Quartino for dinner that night (which was conveniently 4 blocks from the hotel, although we planned dinner way before accommodations were booked!).  This must be the place to be on Saturday nights! There were so many people when we walked in - thankfully we made reservations.  Whitney and I immediately felt like we were in Marcella's (a Michael Cameron restaurant in Columbus).  The menus, plates, kitchen, tables, i.e everything looked the exact same.  We knew it was strange when we went to the bathroom and saw they had the same exact bathtub style sinks and powdered soap - who else has powdered soap?  We asked the staff and they said Marcella's came in and took pictures of Quartino to base Marcella's off of! Sad to hear Marcella's was the original, although I still love it.

Successful weekend in Chicago, amazing to be with some of my closest friends (sad we missed Linds) and checked something else off the wedding checklist!