Hello, nice mice. Welcome to the first installment of a Friday series on searching for The Dress. There is a long story here which unfolded over exactly one day of power-shopping with Mouse's mom, but you'll have to stay tuned to see what happened. We started out on this incredibly cold Denver Saturday, the first really frigid day of the year, in search of A Dress That Would Not Stand Up By Itself. This turned out to be trickier than we had thought on several levels. We arrived at the first wedding boutique to discover that their heater was busted. So it's possible that I was already sour on this Pronovias dress before I even tried it on...no, no, it's the dress. I should explain at this point that I had additional dress criteria: I wanted something with texture, and something that wasn't strapless. In this (small) boutique, there were exactly three such dresses. The major problem with this first one was the layer of lace that falls from that empire waist to mid-thigh--I turned to my mother and whispered, "Is this dress designed for knocked-up brides?" And then we both started giggling really hard, and the saleswoman glared at us, and I made a hasty retreat to the incredibly cold dressing stall (giant clips thumping all the way).

(1. The dress that made me look preggers)