A lot of people are surprised the I have gotten bridesmaid dresses already.  Over the summer, I was eyeing a certain Jcrew dress as something I wanted for myself.  I kept watching as the price dropped lower and lower, but could never justify buying it for myself when I get free cocktail dresses from work all the time.  So I convinced myself to forget about it.

Then we got engaged and that dress popped back into my mind as a bridesmaid dress possibility (pictured below).  At that point the price had dropped from $215 to $59.99.  Since Joe and I are on a really tight budget, and since I loved the dress anyway, I didn’t hesitate and bought four of them immediately (there were very few sizes left so I had to act fast!).

Jcrew dress

I still love the dresses, but as Joe and I fleshed out our ideas for the groomsmen attire, I realized I would love them even more if they were not exactly alike – to go for this “purposefully mismatched” look.  I think it would help create the casual, bohemian look that we are pursuing right now.

So rather than waste money on new dresses, because like I said I still love these dresses, I decided to embellish each dress in its own unique way.  I bought a fifth dress in a size 16 for extra fabric and after consulting with all my ‘maids, I came up with these four designs (pictured below).  I think it will be cute, and they are all easy (for me) embellishments to make.  I really should be thinking about my own dress right now, but the BM modifications seem like a much less daunting task.  So stay tuned, I’ll post another update later about all my DIY progress.

P.S. You might be asking why I didn’t just get BM dresses from work if I get free dresses all the time.  Well, the dresses I get for free are a fairly limited selection and I can only only get one dress for my allowance (not multiples of 4).   Even if I used my company discount to buy the exact dresses I wanted, it would still be significantly more expensive than these Jcrew dresses that I got.