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I've been putting off serious shoe shopping for some time- I have a serious love/hate relationship with shoes. I can find hundreds of pairs of shoes absolutely gorgeous, but I can't stand shopping for shoes. I have too many requirements for a pair of shoes. First and foremost, they have to be comfortable. I'm not talking about just tolerable, but something I want to wear and never take off. Unfortunately, I was born with some of the strangest feet ever- my little toes curl up and don't touch the ground. They slip through the straps on strappy sandals. My big toes point inwards because of wearing narrow riding boots so often as a child, I have a stupidly high inner arch and weak ankles that will roll if I put my foot down wrong. Combine all of these deformities and I can find something wrong with nearly every pair of shoes I try on. Secondly, they have to look good. There's nothing worse than a pair of ugly shoes. Third, they must go with nearly anything in my closet. I absolutely will not buy a pair of shoes for the sake of buying them, or for the fact that they match with only one outfit I own. This leads to a lot of frustration when it comes to shoe shopping and the main reason why I pretty much live in either cowboy boots or flip flops.

When it comes to the wedding, I've looked at hundreds, if not thousands of pairs of shoes. I've tried on everything i can find that I even remotely like and none of them work. My mother wants me to have traditional shoes- ivory, gold, silver, something along those lines. I love the idea of having a pop of color under my dress. However, I'm not sure what my reception dress is going to be and I don't want to have to buy a second pair of shoes to go with it so I'm thinking she's probably right- gold would work best and they look cute with a pair of jeans for a night out too. The next problem is that there's only a couple of inches height difference between the FH and I. I don't want to be towering above him in our wedding photos, and I want to be able to look directly at him, or up to him during our dance- I don't want to be the one looking down! All the shoes I keep finding are way too tall- Sure, I'm happy enough wearing a pair of 4 inch heels for a night out, but that's not what I want for my wedding. Trying to find a pair of cute, 2.5-3 inch pumps is nearly impossible! Most of them look like old lady shoes! Ballet flats aren't an option for me. The only pair of ballet flats I own have been destined to a life of doom in the back of my closet because they have no support in the arch and ankles. Within an hour of walking in them, I feel like my feet are going to either fall off or collapse. And ballet flats are just not elegant- even the dressiest pair look like you should be wearing them around the office.

This has led me to the final conclusion that I have three options. if I want splinters in my feet I could always go barefoot. I could just pick up a pair of white reef flip flops or white rhinestoned rainbows and wear those even though i seriously think wearing flip flops for the ceremony is uber tacky or I could look around at dance shoes- latin/salsa/ballroom dance in particular. And who'd have thought it- I've found several styles I like! They're not perfect by any means, but I would be inclined to wear them again. They've got a cute vintagey-retro feel to them and they'd work with most outfits. Not to mention, the boy and I have started talking about taking dance lessons because it's something I've always wanted to learn to do, so they'd come in useful for that and they're really reasonably priced in comparison to most other shoes! I found all of these on Dance Shoes Online and Dance Shoes Store for about $50-70 plus shipping.