In my case, however, the Dress posed an entirely different challenge. My mother exchanged vows in a lace shirt dress with long-cuffed sleeves and a hemline most people would consider barely legal even by today's standards. She was of the Mary Quant generation.

The evening before her wedding, she'd stopped by Bloomingdale's after work and found it; then she spent the night sewing antique gold buttons down the front for extra flash. The Dress is a snapshot of my mom at her most glam and original. When it came time to find something for my own wedding, the pressure to pick a gown that would say both those things about me made it almost impossible to buy anything.

I made my first appointment at Kleinfeld, which had the largest selection I could find, and dragged along my best man of honor, Christopher, plus the ads I'd torn from the growing stack of "wedding porn" in my living room.

"Are you going to wear a tiara? I can always lend you mine," Christopher said, trying to make me smile, as we sipped our coffees on the N train. At the salon, we were shown into a private dressing room where our salesgirl explained she would bring a selection of dresses based on my photos and our quick chat about my style (Maybe I shouldn't have worn the track pants, I thought). She returned with an armload of clear-plastic body bags and unzipped them one by one. I slipped into an Amy Michaelson sheath with a harness of floating feathers as Christopher kept a log. "Nightgown," he said, making a note in his pad. Next I tried a sexy Monique Lhuillier silk halter-neck style with a plunging neckline and delicate crystal beading. "You look like a slut," he said. Right. After a few more, it became clear that the slim-fit-and-low-cut concept wasn't working. Neither was the poufy princess idea, the elegant A-line one, or anything involving a medieval-looking chapel-length train.

One of the absurdities of wedding shopping is that you're expected to select the dress without actually getting to look through the racks yourself. Maybe she's missed something? How would I know? Then, from the next room, a girl and her mom started going at it. "Say something," the bride yelled. "Say something now! Or are you going to wait until my wedding day to tell me I look like shit?!" At least I wasn't the only one stressed out by this process. Then my mom's dress came back to me: How about something lace, albeit a little longer?

A few minutes later, I was standing on the wooden box in a strapless Chantilly-lace gown with a cathedral-length train and tiny delicate buttons down the back like an ice skater. It was me, it was my mom, it was my Italian grandma—all rolled into one. I wanted it on the spot. The trick was that this dress was in for a trunk show and not part of the store's permanent collection. The trunk-show trade-off is this: Buying at them gets you a 10 to 15 percent discount and an introduction to the designer, but you feel pressured into the purchase. For the sake of consumer confidence—and sitcom potential—Christopher and I decided we should make the rounds, and pledged to come back and buy the dress on its next scheduled trip through town.

In the coming weeks, we saw the Richard Tyler dresses at the Barneys bridal salon, tucked into a corner of the eighth floor that Christopher took to calling "Middle-Earth." There was a fantastic ivory silk chiffon with spaghetti straps and hand-rolled fabric flowers, but it called for someone a lot taller and lankier than I am. We made an appointment at Vera Wang, where we fell in love with an A-line gown embroidered with ribbons and a leather dress made of snowflakelike cutouts. I'm not rock star enough, we agreed—especially since, at $10,000, the dress also required a rock-star-size budget. We stopped by Saks to see more Monique Lhuilliers (a dress called "Obsession" seemed fitting) and spent a lot of time on the couch at Yumi Katsura, where an ethereal satin organza with a petticoat underneath was heavenly, even if it wasn't quite right. At Carolina Herrera, I loved a duchesse satin strapless gown, but it was on the formal side for an afternoon wedding in my parents' garden.

When salesgirls started to send me handwritten notes announcing new arrivals—and the lace dress started making its way back to town—I knew I had to wrap this up. The Bridal Atelier by Mark Ingram, where two of my bridesmaids had bought their own wedding dresses, would be our last stop. A vanilla-colored Angel Sanchez with flowy ruffles in the back looked better on the hanger than it did on me. But there was something about a simple strapless Peter Langner called "Françoise" that seemed oddly cool and hip and classic all at once, even with a veil and a bouquet.

For some reason, I felt committed to the lace as if I were already married to it. But the night before the trunk show, I started to panic. I hadn't seen the dress in months. (They won't even let you take a photograph, as we found out when our flash gave us away.) The next morning, when I slipped on the sample shoes—which are always three sizes too big for my size-5 feet—and stood on the wooden box again, this time with two girlfriends and my mom and Christopher there to help, the Chantilly lace looked different. All the blinking I could do and all the manipulating of the three-way mirrors didn't change how uncomfortable I was: I looked like someone else, a cartoon bride, the conventional kind on top of a wedding cake. I felt pathetic, and I started to cry. My mom left with a "You'll look great no matter what, honey" when she had to go, at which point my crew sprang into action, analyzing the bustle possibilities, what a little belt would do, a smaller train, a Valium?

We took a vote. I voted to slink out and head for the diner across the street. Years of shopping experience, all for nothing. Why was this so easy for my mom and so hard for me? Perhaps the pit in my stomach had something to do with the fact that at every store, attendant after attendant kept telling me—and not entirely unconvincingly—"This is only the most important decision of your life!" like some kind of yogic mantra. My friends stayed calm but looked worried. "Here's the problem," said Christopher. "We can never see the dresses all in one room and compare them like a normal shopping experience. Why don't we go back to the Bridal Atelier and see the runner-up—right now"

The next thing I knew, we were all in a Tel-a-Car, careering toward midtown. The Bridal Atelier was bustling, like a debutante ball in progress. In the midst of the tulle-covered mayhem, Françoise was waiting for me in a little room made of curtains on three sides. I stepped into the dress, one foot at a time, carefully balancing, as I'd learned to do. There was no lace, no gold buttons. It felt familiar and it felt new all at once. For the first time, I noticed, the sample shoes actually fit. "Finally," said Christopher. "Get out the credit card!"