Lucy's First Holy Communion - choosing the dress!

We started looking for a dress pretty early...luckily!
When I was doing some online Christmas shopping at Kohl's, I found a dress on clearance and ordered it.
By the time I got around to showing it to Lucy, she tried it on, and it fit, but she was underwhelmed. She didn't hate it but she really wasn't feeling it...(though it' hard to tell from the pictures. She may not have loved the dress but she sure loved the photo shoot!).

I was talking to someone at work about her upcoming 1st communion and she said she still had her daughter's dress and offered to bring it in for Lucy to try on. She loved it...but it didn't quite fit (wouldn't zip up)...

Dress #3 - 
I found online at Macy's. Very, very pretty but it had some fabric flowers on it. I thought maybe I'd be able to remove them for the First Communion (then maybe put them back on to wear again for something else) but when it arrived, I saw it wasn't possible without ruining the dress. She begged to keep it anyway but we returned it.

Dress #4 -
Next up was Chloe's 1st Communion dress. Lucy loved it on the hanger and loved it when she tried it on...but it was showing a lot in the chest area and I just wasn't convinced. She was thinking it was a keeper but my search continued on to...

Dress #5 
We really thought this was "the one." I found it at Kohl's which is the closest department store to her school...so I was afraid a bunch of girls would be wearing the same dress. But she really liked it - it had some sparkle / glitter, a twirly skirt and it was longer in the back than in the front - all great features for the Lucygirl.

We had moved on to shoes and accessories - we'd decided she'd wear the veil Ashley and Chloe had worn. 

But then one day I was at TJ Maxx. I was actually in there looking for a Reds shirt for myself - to wear on Opening Day - when I spotted this little beauty. It reminded me a bit of the one from Macy's with the pink flower (the dress Lucy had really loved) plus some of the beading detail at the top actually looked like a cross!

She loved it! She tried on the front-runner again and decided it was a little itchy. We tried on the new one again - with the veil and shoes - and realized we finally had THE dress!