Dress shopping without "mom"

Honestly? Unless you'd truly find dress shopping right now a calming and enjoyable experience, I'd put it off for a while. You have tons of time, so I'd give yourself the gift of time right now. There are a lot of raw emotions to start with and going shopping with a huge group can create a lot more stress and frustration. You could easily wait almost a year before you start looking and you'd still have plenty of time. Find something else wedding-related (or completely unrelated, like a favorite hobby or something) that will be a fun distraction and focus on that to help clear your head in your free time. I'm sorry about your family's situation. Good luck to you all!

I understand the position you're in when it comes to kind of focusing on the wedding rather than breaking down or blowing up, either or. I had a death in FH family last week and so we took a week off from wedding (way late in the game to do that because we tie the knot 10.05, but we needed it because it's stressful enough) and then now we've thrown ourselves back in. We don't even want people to give their sympathies to us until after the Honeymoon because it's so difficult to think that the person who passed, will not be there (FH was very close to them).

Ultimately, though... you can still make your dress experience special. Don't wait for people, do it when you want. Have the people you want, there. I didn't wait, I didn't ask anyone who had time or availability -- I said "I want this dress, I'm going in" (I had my eye on a dress last October and it went on clearance in January and was quickly running out of stock). The only people who came were my Mother & Sister. If I would have waited much longer, the dress wouldn't even be in a size that could be altered down to mine (I had to go super big and they brought it in easily enough).

Though, in all honesty, I wasn't even going to invite anyone because I had my heart set on the dress (I was ultimately coaxed into trying on more to make sure it was 'the one').

I think you make your own experience and you need to realize that it doesn't matter who goes or who has what title. It's hard to see past that, but I really urge you to understand that it's alright not to have certain individuals and that we put things in our head because it seems the 'norm'. It's okay to be outside the box, it's okay not to have -- what we expect to be -- the 'traditional' try on.

All of this is pretty fresh, but with a bit of time, you'll be able to enjoy it if you at least look at it from that perspective, imo.

For now, unless you've found 'the one' or you think the style might go out, I'd maybe pause the dress shopping and watch and make sure they don't go to clearance or the style change out route before you have a chance to try them.

Hi Tiffany!

I’m really sorry that your family is going through this at the minute.

As the pps have suggested, I would recommend putting off dress shopping for a while, until you have cleared your head and don’t feel pressure to choose a dress just because these people are with you. You still have plenty of time to find your beautiful dress so I definitely giving your family some time to deal with the situation at hand and allow everyone to heal a bit would benefit everyone, especially you. You want to enjoy your dress shopping experience and feel wonderful trying on different dress styles.