Happily Waving a White Flag

The Pin Cushion Wedding Party has a bit of a gender bias. We've snagged ourselves a lot of ladies, and seem to scare off the men. In fact, we have 6 females in our bridal party (3 on my side, 3 on Mr. PC's) and only 2 males (1 on each side). We love our bridal crew, lopsidedness and all.

Our bridesmaids and groomswomen deserve to wear awesome dresses at our wedding (though perhaps a slightly less awesome dress than my own would be acceptable). The six ladies have fabulously different bodies. And different skin tones. And different hair color. And very different heights (two people under 5" [I chose 'em to make me look taller in comparison]).

It was a daunting challenge to pick out a dress that would flatter all of the 'maids. But when I face a challenge, I buck up, square my shoulders and attack it head on . . . no . . . wait. That must be some other Bee. This bee tends to slump over, wave a white flag and pass the challenge off to some unsuspecting victim. Like my bridesmaids and groomswomen.

I asked the ladies to choose their own dresses. I gave them the loose guidelines of 1) stay within our wedding colors, 2) no long dresses, 3) please don't look like you work at A) a strip club or B) a nunnery. That was pretty much it. And, watching the 'maids' reactions, you would have thought it was some great act of selflessness on my part, and not a brilliant scheme to pawn off my difficult decision on someone else.

Here are the decisions that I didn't have to make, I mean, here are the dresses they've bought so far:

Groomswoman L has a smokin' red dress from here (with detachable empire waist for baby-nursing [or showing off your goodies {though that breaks guideline 3}]).
Bridesmaid J bought a sweet eyelet dress from here.

Groomswoman Q bought a sexy satin dress from here.
And Bridesmaid S picked a fab flowy green dress from here.

As I assume most of you are over the age of 5, and thus, can add single digits, you probably noticed there are only 4 dresses shown and we have 6 bridal party ladies (if you are under the age of 5, I congratulate you on your extraordinary ability to read and navigate the internet). That is because two of our female attendants are still looking for their perfect dress. And though we are only a few weeks out, knowing those 2 are still dress-less doesn't raise my blood pressure even 1 point (okay, maybe 1 or 2, but that's it!). The gorgeous dress choices that the others have made leaves me confident that the last two dresses will be amazing as well. (And if not, all the better my own dress will look in comparison, right? [I'm just asking for bad wedding karma here]).

The decision to hand off the dress picks to the ladies has been win-win. I have less to worry about and the girls might actually find something they will wear again, and in a price range that doesn't give them a heart attack (I'm just thinking about my friends' health here, people).

How did you pick the dresses for your bridal party ladies? Or are you joining me in waving a white flag on that decision and giving up full control?