Dress Up Season has arrived! Easter, prom, weddings, graduations…

I realized this the other day when someone mentioned they liked my new outfit, and I found myself explaining that it wasn’t new. I had simply decided I wasn’t too cold to wear skirts and dresses again!

We continued our discussion by reminiscing about family clothing traditions and routines.

When I was a kid, my mom would make (or occasionally purchase) my sisters and I new dresses for Easter. They usually all matched or followed some sort of theme. Sometimes we would get to pick out our Easter outfit from a fancy dress shop in Odessa, TX when we visited our Granny. She loved to help us pick out twirly dresses with bells sewed into the skirts. We would also go shopping before Easter for new dress shoes to wear with white socks tipped in lace. We would top it all off with a dressy new hat.

One year, I had a difficult time finding shoes that fit correctly. They had to bedressy enough for Easter and fit my style. There was so much pressure to find shoes that would work. And we absolutely had to have them by the following Sunday. We went to several shoe stores in Albuquerque (my mother had the patience of a gentle stream) before finally finding a pair that would work. This outfit then became our official dress-up outfit for that season. (We did a similar thing for Christmas.)

The process of Easter dress hunting was just as much a yearly tradition as dying eggs on Grandma Love’s back porch. Or waiting for Grandpa to hide eggs in all the familiar places. Even as a young adult, it was a yearly event my sisters and I still enjoyed with our Mom.

As a mother myself, things have changed a bit. I no longer feel the pressure to buy or make one brand new outfit in the spring to add to my closet as my dress-up outfit of the season. Although my daughter does love fancy-twirly dresses, she doesn’t actually need dressy-fancy clothes to wear to church or school.

We get to reserve our dress-up times for whenever the heck we want those times to be! So I say, “Cheers!” to moving on from one new, required dress-up outfit per season. Maybe some years I won’t dress up fancy at all. (I hope that’s not true). Other years, I might dress up every weekend! I sure hope there are some times when I dress up just because I want to be fancy and go out with someone I love.

I think EVERYONE should get fancy every once in awhile!

What’s your next dress up event?

Whether you’re dressing up for Easter, Prom, a wedding, a classy work party, a graduation, or a HOT DATE, enjoy it!

Get fancy! Find the perfect shoes and love every step you take in them!