WEDDING WEDNESDAY: A WEDDING SHOE SAGA

christian louboutin douce du desert ankle tie pump nordstrom

{the wedding shoes of my dreams… literally}

I can’t believe this is my final Wedding Wednesday post before our wedding this weekend! That means all future wedding posts will be photos of our actual wedding as opposed to inspiration shots and progress pics. Ahhh! I couldn’t be more excited to marry Will and to share all the details we’ve been working on for the past year and a half. (If you want to know where each of our wedding events is taking place, you can read about that here!) We so appreciate all of the well wishes leading up to our big day!

I wrote a post a few months ago about my search for the perfect pair of wedding shoes and, while I’d planned to keep them a secret, I decided to share the pair I ultimately chose since you’ll be seeing them in a few days anyway and I know a surprising number of you are planning your own weddings right now! And there’s a funny little saga that goes along with finding the perfect pair. 🙂

A funny little story about the wedding shoes I chose… I’m a shoe girl through and through, but I’m extra excited about this pair for several reasons. When I first talked to my mom about what shoes we both envisioned with my dress, we dreamt up a pair of ivory satin pumps with a big bow around the ankle, completely in our imaginations and before we had seen anything like them. In fact, when we started shopping for wedding shoes (over a year ago now!), we couldn’t find anything remotely similar to this pair of shoes we’d conjured up in our heads. And it was extra funny because they were actually quite similar to the pair of shoes I’d dreamt up for my first blog redesign back in 2011.

So earlier this summer, she and I found this pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps at the Saks shoe salon off Greenwich Avenue and fell in love. I hadn’t been planning on wearing navy shoes with my dress (and was worried they’d read as black under the shadow of my dress), but the silhouette was so simple and pretty and almost ballerina-esque. I liked them much more than anything else I’d seen or tried on, so I bought them on the spot and crossed “find wedding shoes” off my to do list.

manolo blahnik umice suede crisscross pumps in navy blue

{the runners up}

Then a couple months ago, I was doing my routine stalking of Nordstrom’s new arrivals and lo and behold, there they were: the exact pair of shoes my mom and I had imagined, available as an actual shoe and not just as a thought bubble in our brains. I freaked out and texted her (plus five or six girlfriends for good measure) and was all set to forget about the navy shoes in favor of the shoes I’d really wanted from the moment I’d found my dress. But then, as fate would have it, the shoes were only available for pre-order, scheduled to ship two months after our wedding date (quite the painful news after a twenty-month engagement!).

I decided it wasn’t meant to be and went back to the plan of wearing the pretty navy shoes I’d picked out with my mom. But then, with three weeks until our wedding, I decided to check out the dream shoes one more time… and you guys, they were suddenly in stock, in my size only. Now I’m not a person who just casually drops $900 on a pair of shoes, but if that’s not fate, I don’t know what is! Even Will agreed I had to have them (he called it the end of an eighteen-month quest haha).

So I had the dream shoes shipped to Nantucket and tried them on with a swatch from my wedding dress and (unfortunately for my wallet) they were absolutely perfect. I’ll admit they’re not the most comfortable shoes I’ll ever wear, but my Grandy always says “for style, you have to suffer”… and, let’s be honest, I’m no stranger to putting my feet through hell in favor of pretty shoes. I couldn’t return the original pair as I’d already worn them to a handful of dance lessons, but they’re so comfortable and classic I know I’ll be able to get great use of them for many years after our wedding.

In any event, they’re now available in a number of colors and sizes at Nordstrom, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Net-a-PorterBarneys, and Bergdorf Goodman, and I just wanted to share my silly little shoe saga that ultimately came to a happy conclusion (and probably me dancing barefoot by the end of our wedding reception). If you’re looking for dreamy/crazy gorgeous/slightly uncomfortable but completely stunning wedding shoes (or just statement shoes for all kinds of fabulous events!), I didn’t want to hold out on you.

Feel free to follow our wedding weekend festivities on Instagram @mackenziehoran and with hashtag #missnewbeutty (for Will’s last name, Beuttenmuller, which I’ll be spelling out for the rest of my life 😉 ). We know we are incredibly lucky to celebrate this milestone with our closest family and friends, but as the lovely ladies who read Design Darling (and who make my livelihood possible!), you have all become part of this joyous time in our lives and I just can’t wait to relive all our favorite moments right here in the months to come. xx

P.S. In case you’re curious: a few of the (many, many) other pairs of wedding shoes I tried on:

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