Searching for "The" Dress

I always thought when the time came, I would enjoy shopping for a wedding dress: I'm a Libra--I love vanity, but I guess my problem is that I don't love wedding dresses. I don't like bleach white ballgowns and trains that feel like I'm dragging the weight of a dead person behind me. That eliminates 90% of the dresses out there. I'm also thrifty (okay, cheap) and can't justify spending over $500 on a one-day dress. That eliminates the remaining 10%. As for trying them on, I'm a self-sufficient gal; I don't like saleswomen pushing their way into the dressing room to help me every two seconds. I'm not having luck finding the right thing at department stores either.

So, with the clock ticking, I've come up with a plan that makes me nervous. There is a pretty, affordable dress I tried on in California. It has one shoulder with flowers and it wraps nicely. My hesitancy with this dress is that it's all white or all ivory. I was trying really hard to spice things up with some variation of typical bridal colors.
Then I came across this two-toned dress at a bridal store.
A loud woman there with her niece told me she never would have thought to have two different colors on a dress but that it really stuck out to her and she was shocked she liked it. Even though I didn't care for her loud backwards compliments, I liked that she felt it was "different." I liked that it was different, and I could see making some small adjustments to make it even more unique. The only problem was the price of $900 not including alterations.

After researching alternatives, I decided to order, should I say, a dress based on this dress online...factory direct from Taiwan. The whole thing makes me uneasy and it's not very ethical of me, but for less than a third of the price, my cheap instincts won over. It's a gamble if it comes out okay (or even comes at all!) but it's a relatively cheap gamble so I had to try. As one bride commented, "People will knock you getting a dress from overseas, but where do they think their designer dress is really coming from?"

It should take about six weeks to make and ship and at that time I can determine if it was a giant mistake and hope I have enough time to order the other dress, or just plan to walk down the isle in a potato sack.