My flowergirl - the Diva!

Ok, so if you haven't figured it out by now, children (at least the ones in me and Mr Fix It's family) are a *huge* part of our big wedding day celebration.  I have a 2 1/2 year old nephew, PJ and Mr Fix It has a 19 month old nephew, Caden (his sister's son), and two nephews, Luke (5) and Christopher (3) (his youngest brother's two sons).

When it came time to pick a ring bearer, we couldn't choose between the 4 of them so we just decided to include all of them.  I will post soon about how we are going to provide 'tasks' for each of them as they come down the aisle.  But again, I digress...

The flower girl selection was sort of easier and sort of not.  My sister just had a baby girl last year who will be turning 1 year old two days before our wedding (check out my post here about my past dilemma regarding this little princess).  But Analeigh (that's her name) is not really walking yet and a 1 year old certainly doesn't understand or can't handle any FG tasks.  My sister was fine with us not including her and was happy to not have to worry about keeping her occupied throughout a long day of photos and such.  (And yes, I know some people push or pull their little baby girls in strollers or wagons down the aisle but just not our thing.)

Though there are many boys in the family, there's not as many young girls...except for my little second cousin, Tatum.  She was the FG in my sister's wedding three years ago and now at six years old, she's still totally FG material today!  Back then, she was so darling when we took her shopping for her dress...she kept raving about how she wanted a princess dress and anything we put her in she would twirl around in.  Such a cutie patootie!

Well, her mom (my cousin-in-law) is one of my Bridesmaids and she cried when I asked her to be in my wedding.  So when I called her and asked if she would be okay with Tatum being my FG, she immediately put Tay-Tay on the phone so I could ask her...silly :)  Of course, Tay-Tay was super excited.

So we took her along when we went to show the ladies my wedding gown back in June.  We browsed aroudn the salon looking for FG dresses and they had a good selection but nothing was jumping out at me.  Then Tatum found this pretty little number - look at how she is rockin' the model pose!

And here is a photo of Tay-Tay in her little FG dress next to the sample gown of my own wedding dress

(I realize I've never posted pics of me *IN* my dress - this is not the same color as my gown but a full dress post is coming on Monday/Tuesday).  I loved this dress on her because the little gathers along the bottom sort of matched the pickups in my skirt.

But when the dresses arrived, I have to admit, I was truly disappointed with how Tatum's dress looked on her.  The dress was fine, but it didn't have the same 'oomph' as the sample did.

See how the pickups are so much flatter and 'hang' more rather than being all poofy and bunched up?  Plus, the stupid salon ordered the dress a size bigger than what we had asked for and before you ask, yes - I did in fact have a copy of my order to show them they were wrong.  They said they'd return it if I wanted but I was so over it (future post to come) that I just wanted out of the salon.  I figured I'd deal with it later.

Then as the months went on...I began to ponder how I *HATED* Tatum's dress.  I mean I was finally in love with my gown and the ladies' BM dresses but Tatum's dress was depressing me.  When one day I came across this post by a Cupcake Wedding.  She showed the cutest little chiffon flower girl dress!  And so I made the decision to pick out a different dress for Tatum.  When I called Erin, her mom, to tell her that I was going to buy a new dress for Tatum and ask if she'd be okay with that, Erin said it should be fine.  Then later, Erin told me that when she told Tatum "Stacey is going to change your flower girl dress," Tatum responded with "Ugh, she's going to change my dress?  Really?"  LOL  Seriously - what a DIVA!  I laughed when she told me she responded that way.

But when I showed up at Thanksgiving with her new dress and her try it on, everyone (her mom, my sister, my mom, and even little Tay-Tay) all agreed that the new dress was much better and would be much cuter with our wedding colors:

It's still not quite perfect, we have to take her in next month to get it taken in just a bit and to maybe hem up the bottom some so it makes it a little 'cuter' but I really love it.  Thanks to Cupcake Wedding's post, I found it online at a shop in LA called http://www.girlsdressline.com/.  And it was cheaper than the first dress we bought!  Which by the way, I am now trying to sell on Craigs List if anyone is interested :)  It's a size 8 and can be used for a bigger FG or a Junior Bridesmaid and the sash is detachable.  :)

Did you ladies have any hiccups or problems when trying to select your FG dress?