Crimson Christmas Dress

I decided several weeks ago that I would buy myself a new semi-formal dress after I could no longer fit into three of my old favorites. One of the old dresses I gave to my [smaller] friend Lydia while the other two ended up at the church thrift shop. So, now I only own one semi-formal winter dress and I just wore it to our friends Paul & Kelli's Wedding last month. Therefore, I needed something new [that fit me] for the upcoming Christmas Party Mike and I are hosting later this month. I have been looking at dresses online for weeks and was close to acquiring a new one from jcrew.com. But, 24 hours after I placed my order, J.crew cancelled it and claimed they were sold out. Then I found a dress I liked at anntaylor.com. But, since I've never bought/worn/seen a dress from there, I was hesitant about taking the risk with an online order. I even browsed some department store websites like JCPenney, Sears, Macy's, and New York & Company. Last night I went to Colonie Center to browse. I wanted to check out a couple of dresses I saw online at Sears and New York & Company. The Sears dress was in stock, available in all sizes and drastically on sale. I tried it on. It fit. It looked nice. It was missing something. It was missing oomph, va-va-voom, glamour... Here it is:I decided to keep looking. If I didn't find anything better, I would come back to Sears and buy it. I went to Boscov's next. I did try a few dresses on but they were all too old-looking and frumpy. Next I went to New York & Company - one of my favorite stores for buying work clothes. They aren't known for having or selling many dresses, but they do feature a few each season. Sure enough, they had a killer, red dress on a mannequin near the front of the store. I thought to myself "Those dresses always look better on the model or mannequin than in real life, but what the hell?" I tried it on. "Whoa, can I pull this off?" was my first thought. The strapless dress had some difficulty staying up with my modest chest. But I figured with a couple of small alterations and the right bra, it was doable. Other than that, it fit me well and I grew fond of it. I pretended to greet my imaginary guests in the mirror of my dressing room. It worked. I loved it. I bought it. It was on sale AND I opened a store credit card in order to save an additional 20%. Check it out: