Bonding through Shopping for Mother of the Bride Dress

Bonding through Shopping for Mother of the Bride Dress

Are you looking for the perfect mother of the bride dress? My mother and I have not always been close. I went through those teenage years too, where I slammed my door shut, and yelled at the top of my lungs in my bedroom. Then I always turned up the radio at full blast to drown out anything she was saying. Oh the teenage, rebellious years. They are not easy. I do not know how my parents did it. 

I can tell you, the experts are right. It is just a stage. It will eventually go away. I am now so close to my mother, that she is like my best friend.

Now I look forward to shopping with my mom and doing basically anything with her, just to be able to spend time with her. What is your most favorite thing you do with your mom?

It was going to be an all day shop till you drop day. We were not going to stop until we found the perfect mother of the bride dress for my wedding.

You know how it goes women, you always end up shopping at every store for the “one” item you need, only to return to the first store that had exact item that you needed. Well, that is exactly what happened to us. We went shopping in Indianapolis, Indiana at the local mall and a few other stores here.

Ways to Bond with your Mom

Not everyone is close to their mother, and I understand that, however there are always ways to improve your connection with her. I realize there are generations gaps, and sometimes respect can be hard, but do not wait until it is too late to connect closer with your mother. Sometimes you have to cut the ties, but when you do not have to, make the most of your time together.

Do you ever wonder where you get your style of shopping from? Are you a fast shopper, like you can eye a nice shirt from a distance and know it has to be yours, or are you a slow shopper and have to look at everything? It is amazing how you can see yourself in your mother, when you are shopping for the same thing together? I never realized how similar we were on color interests. I was having fall theme colors for my wedding, but we both fell in love with this deep dark eggplant purple, long dress. It was beautiful. But, we still had many other stores to go to and compare, so on with the shopping trip.

My mom was the one who taught me how to be frugal with my clothes and still look fashionable. I am forever grateful for that. She taught me how to make three outfits out of one pair of pants or shirt. It is amazing how creative you can become when you hang out with your mother shopping. We have shopped so much together now, that we can almost read each other’s minds when we just hold up an outfit. Shopping together now is almost a traditional ritual now. I know I will passing down this family fun of bonding time with my daughter in the future.

While shopping, you can bond using the following ideas:

• While you are exercising together by walking around, you can also spend the time learning what possible Christmas gifts each other may want. Pay attention and listen to what each other likes or does not like while shopping. Depending on your daughter’s age, you can use the clothes you see to talk about issues like self esteem and her image of herself.
• We all tend to open up more and communicate while we are doing something else, like shopping. This is especially true for teenage daughters, so use your shopping time to ask questions about each other’s life and find out how each other are doing in school, work, with the kids, etc.
• Keep a mother daughter journal of the activities you did for the day together. When we get older, we tend to forget about our daily memories we are making sometimes. What a great treasure to leave your daughter to read, years in the future. Leave this journal in a time capsule, so your daughter can open it and read it, when she has a daughter herself. Priceless.
• Find a common interest to talk about. Go shopping to stores that have your common interests in mind, like craft stores.

Do not take your time with each other for granted. Treasure your shopping bonding time. Save pictures from your trip and your special mother daughter journal in your own time capsule or in a decorative Wedding Time Capsule to give your daughter when she gets married. What a great day it will be for your daughter to open her Wedding Time Capsule 10 or 20 years later, and reminisce what it was like the first year of her marriage and all the wedding preparations you did with her, as she reads this sentimental journal.

It is now a joke between my mother and I about how many stores we went to, and still ended up coming back to the first store, Dillards, to buy her mother of the bride dress. Just wait till we tell you what happened to her dress during our wedding ceremony, in a future blog.

So what is your favorite bonding activity to do with your mom? Comment below.

Making Milestone Moments Count,

– Marcie