Maids and colors and styles, oh my!

Thus far in my wedding planning, bridesmaids' attire has been at the bottom of my list, something I didn't want to think about or deal with. Honestly, I just didn't care what they wore, as long as it was attractive/pretty and wedding-appropriate. I told my sister/MOH to take the reins and to leave me mostly out of it. And, as she is much more of a fashionista than I, she kindly obliged. We discussed finding dresses off-the-rack, as my sister refused to wear/buy a hideous bridesmaid dress (she was in a wedding for which the dresses were so bad that she threw hers out in an airport trashcan on her way home!).

I'm not really a fan of traditional BM attire, where all the maids where the same dress in the same color. For me, that's just too formal/posed, and of course, different styles fit different bodies. I was inspired by Miss Powder Puff's maids, who all wore different dresses in coordinating colors:

(photo from her photog, Shutter Sam)

My sister spent an August weekend at the beach outside of Charleston, SC, and she went shopping on King Street one day where she popped into LulaKate, a small boutique that carries its own line of BM and ready-to-wear attire. And she loved the BM dresses! LulaKate has about 20 styles (3 skirt styles - A-line, full, and party, in a few lengths; a dozen or more bodice styles) and dozens of colors in 3 different fabrics. So over Labor Day weekend, when I was at the beach, I stopped by LulaKate too. And I'm relieved/excited to say that I found my BM dresses! I'm still going to have different colors/styles, but all in silk dupioni fabric and complementary/similar colors:

(images from LulaKate's website and compiled by me in PowerPoint)

Unfortunately, the colors on the website are not nearly as bright or vibrant as the fabric swatches, so the image makes my dresses look a little bland, but hopefully you all get the idea. I've chosen a bunch of colors that all look good together, so each maid can wear a different color in her style of choice, and no one has to get stuck with last pick (I have more colors than maids). My plan is to ask the girls to rank the colors in order of preference, and hopefully I can assign the colors so everyone is happy and gets first or second choice. At least, that's the plan ... and according to the Fashion Queen (my sister) the dresses are very re-wearable. Coming from her, that's saying something.

The only LulaKate location is in Charleston, but the dresses are carried by Bella Bridesmaid shops (there's one in Baltimore if any DC brides want to check out LulaKate), and there's a Bella Bridesmaid shop in the home city of most of my Bridesmaid (not the one in Benin, but that's a story for another time).

Are any of you opting for non-traditional BM dresses? How are you going about it?