There was no escape. I would have to buy a dress. I started to listen to the advice. "Slip dresses don't photograph well," I was told. "Lace is really popular this year," another advisor offered. Still another announced, as if she were throwing down a gauntlet, "The Vera Wang sample sale is next week."

The more I learned, the more overwhelming the whole process seemed. I logged onto the Knot's website, hoping for a quick primer. But under a tab marked "gowns," I found over 200 featured designers and a complicated glossary. Sure, I knew what brocade and chiffon were, but shantung, honiton lace, and leg o' mutton sleeves? Forget princess for a day, I just wanted a white dress that wasn't going to make me look fat.

My recently married friend Liz urged exploratory research at both the Manhasset Bridal Salon on Long Island and Brooklyn's Kleinfeld's-the ultimate bride emporium, where customers don't actually get to look at the merchandise. Instead, your assigned salesperson, who has worked with 15 other anxious brides that same day, decides which of the 3000 dresses in stock will suit you best.

It sounded dreadful, but I dutifully made my appointments.

Others recommended bypassing the retail bridal salons altogether, finding a picture of the perfect dress, and having it custom-made. A Chinese friend named Lonnie had a $10,000 Vera Wang dress knocked-off in Hong Kong. While she looked gorgeous and, no doubt, photographed beautifully-a big consideration when wedding-dress shopping-the stiff ballroom skirt gave her about as much maneuverability as the antebellum hoop skirts worn by women of the Old South. She struggled throughout the evening to pass between the tables without knocking over chairs. Dancing with the groom was out of the question.

At my local newsagent, I bought four bridal magazines, feeling shame I hadn't experienced since purchasing The Bridges of Madison County. Leafing through pages and pages of confectionary dresses, I tried to imagine myself feeling comfortable in any one of them. I looked at the prices. The gowns started at $600 and went up to $8000 and beyond for Badgley Mischka and Dior. The cost of this single-use garment was starting to make me nervous.

My almost-mother-in-law didn't help matters when she decided my dress was the only aspect of my wedding that merited her attention. She seemed to know about every wedding sample sale and trunk show taking place in Manhattan, and wasn't shy about sharing all the details. She recounted with relish stories of friends' daughters scoring $6000 gowns for a mere three grand. In her world, there is no greater surrender than paying retail. I love a good bargain, too, but I don't think there's any shame in forking over the full price.

Before the Vera Wang sample sale-where people line the block at 6 a.m. for a shot at a 70 percent-off Vera that may have stains or a rip-I went to Vermont for a long weekend. My mom had made an appointment at Sewly Yours and Once Upon a Bride. The store's two names indicate that in addition to the five lines of new dresses, they carry a huge selection of vintage gowns.

I hadn't considered the possibility of buying my dress in Burlington. I figured there wouldn't be much selection, and that you had to try on hundreds of dresses before finding "the one." But with wedding dresses, as with men, sometimes you get lucky.

Sewly Yours is an ideal place to buy a wedding dress. It's slightly fussy-they make you remove your shoes and put on white gloves before entering the store-but fun and personable at the same time. Owner Debbie LaFramboise and salesperson Bridget Mora manage to indulge the inner bride while helping her maintain perspective: this is, after all, a dress. And the wedding is just a party.

LaFramboise opened Sewly Yours and Once Upon a Bride 11 years ago and now outfits roughly 85 brides a year, lavishing lots of personal attention on each. An expert seamstress herself with over 20 years' experience in custom and restoration work, LaFramboise carries Priscilla of Boston, Justina McCaffrey, Adele Wechsler, Jane Wilson Marquis and Wearkstatt. The vintage gowns span from turn-of-the-century to the 1960s.

Bridget, my mom and I circled the store examining the dresses. "We usually start with six dresses in different styles, then we can focus on whichever style or designer you feel most comfortable in," Bridget explained. This was relaxing, even fun.

We gathered up six radically different dresses, and I first tried on the one worn by the mannequin bride in the window. The white lace dress made me look sallow and bloated. Maybe this wasn't so fun, after all. But before I could get too critical about my body's shortcomings, Bridget declared with authority, "The stark white washes you out and a strapless gown will be more flattering."

It was the dress's fault, not mine. Thank you, Bridget. The next dress had a name, like all the Wearkstatt dresses-a line of mid-priced wedding frocks designed by a husband-wife team from Germany based in Manhattan's SoHo. Not only do all Wearkstatt dresses have charming, evocative names; they also have an ingenious double zipper mechanism, which flatters the body like a perfectly cut Armani suit.

I tried on the Cornelia, a strapless A-line dress in ivory with "all-over embroidery on tulle," as the label described it. To me it was an ivory strapless dress, with cute little bows on the back, that didn't make me look like a puff pastry. Once Bridget zipped me in, I walked out to the viewing area and mounted the little pedestal. Strains of "Here Comes the Bride" echoed in my head. My mom's expression said it all. This was the dress and we both knew it. I never wanted to take it off. I looked at a string of zeroes on the price tag. Unfortunately, the amount was closer to the "average price of a wedding dress" than my mom's Georgetown steal.

Maybe I could revive the old custom Edith Wharton wrote about in The Age of Innocence: "It was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly garment during the first year or two of marriage." Why not? Bridget grabbed a floor-length veil and attached it to the crown of my head and the transformation was complete. In a flash, the wedding went from a blurry, far-off event to a wonderfully real rite of passage that was fast approaching. As if I needed more convincing, I tried on others-the Livia, the Carina, the Emanuelle. But with Cornelia, it was love at first sight.