Bridesmaid dress horror stories (or good stories!)

You do have some right stories, Mrs R!  Maybe you should write a book.

And you've not even heard the one about the Christmas Eve massacre with the red foxes wearing flea collars in the chicken coop...

And you've not even heard the one about the Christmas Eve massacre with the red foxes wearing flea collars in the chicken coop...

  OMG that sounds like something Pixar could make a movie about!

I was MOH in my now ex-best friend's wedding. It was a wedding on a budget, so the dress I wore was second hand (it was a bridesmaid dress from another friend's wedding). It was light pink and was dyed to what was I think supposed to be a coral color but instead came out a cross between salmon and tangerine. And to make things worse, it was originally made for a small busted woman, which I definitely am NOT. So I spent the entire wedding not able to breathe and *this* close to passing out and praying hard that I made it through the ceremony without bursting out of the thing and exposing myself to all of the horrified guests. I've never once seen the pictures from the wedding nor do I want to.

OMG that sounds like something Pixar could make a movie about!

Yeah, only instead of Chicken Run -- this would be much more of a bloody, carnage-strewn black comedy.

LOL you guys don't know the half of it! What you don't see is he is actually wearing a gun (real) in a leather holster! One of the groomsmen had a ZZ Top type beard which my husband swore it wasn't real. I wish she still had the wedding album posted online.
The cake was a double tier with a huge brass looking horse and rider on top. Around the edge of the cake was iced barbed wire. The entire thing was just wrong wrong wrong but what's worse is it wasn't really planned to be costumed. Most of the people who were involved actually dress like this on a daily basis! Weird. My brother always had a thing about cowboys and cowboy hats ever since he was very very young he wore a cowboy hat but he just takes it too the extreme in his everyday life! He has horses and the entire kit and caboodle!
I spoke to him a few hours ago. He may be coming here for a visit so lock up your daughters Britain! 
PS. my mother went to the wedding and said the brides dress was "GORGEOUS" I won't even go into that chapter of my life! 

ok you're just making things up now

if he comes over take him to the night club called "heaven" the cowboy fetish will fit right in

I've been a bridesmaid 7 times (although I feel I'm missing 1 or 2 in the counting). I've been pretty fortunate as the prices have ranged from free (I wore a dress my friend wore in another wedding) to I think around $150. I think my mom paid for the dress I wore in my sister's wedding because I was a poor college student, and my aunt paid for half of the cost of the dresses in each of my cousin's weddings, but other than that I've always paid for my own. I never expected them to pay for my dress and would be pleasantly surprised if it were offered! If I had to pay over $200 for a dress, I would be pretty annoyed. I don't mind paying for the dress, but I like it when the bride offers to pay for hair and makeup if we want it. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.

The worst was definitely my sister's. I felt like I was wearing a curtain. It was that thick kind of material, complete with the rhinestone bobble in my cleavage. The color was maroon, so it was perfect for a hot August wedding. 

Pebbles, thanks for the pic of your brother's wedding! Hilarious!!!

I've been a MOH once, for my sister's wedding last year.  The dress is in the closet, never worn again.  It's a nice dress but it's floor length, halter with a bustle in the back.  It'll make a nice dress up thing for a kid one day, I guess.

Having a hard time selecting dresses for my own wedding without flashes of uglydress.com!

Something really cool that my sister did for her wedding was to find something that wasn't a bride's maid dress at all. She went to Ann Taylor and looked around, and found some gorgeous tea length ones. We ended up getting something else from another store, but they were not "bride's maid" dresses. I think if they are tea length or a style of dress that could be shortened into tea or cocktail length later without looking horrible, that is a good way to pick. Although, it's your wedding

Just as an example though:

http://www.anntaylor.com/catalog/department.jsp?N=1200042&categoryId=193

Those Ann Taylor dresses are classic and gorgeous!

J. Crew also has a line of cool bridesmaid (and other wedding) stuff that's not overly weddingy. A friend was going to use those dresses a couple of years ago when I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, but I think one of the other bridesmaids was huffy so she switched. Ugh. I wish she'd stuck with her original choice!

I'm so glad to have found this thread, as the thing I'm dreading the MOST is ugly bridesmaid dresses. In my opinion, choosing ugly bridesmaid dresses is the biggest unforgiveable sin when it comes to weddings.

Now, rather than buying a dress, my AMAZING seamstress of a mother is re-creating this dress: http://www.foreverbridals.com/gownpix.asp?Style=47125, making a few changes along the way (change colour to ivory, I hate halter necks, etc.)

My (4) bridesmaids are 15, 18, 19, and 20 respectively and all very style-concious and a bit funky, so I obviously want to find dresses which suit their style. We also want brighter colours for the thing, which poses the biggest problem. Anyone know where to find brightly-coloured dresses that actually look quite nice?

I'm really leaning toward the whole let-them-choose-their-own-dresses route and just run them by me first, as I trust they won't choose something horrible.