The perfect wedding (guest) dress. Please help me choose!!!

"Mint to be" dress

Well, it's wedding season again.  It's that special time of year to find that perfect oh-so-flattering-but-not-so-much-as-to-show-up-the-bride frock.  I had my heart set on this one (pictured on the right), but by the time I'd spotted it in my way-not-age-appropriate teeny-bopper magazine, and hopped on the site to purchase it, it was sold out.  Just so we have this straight, I'm not usually one of those see-it-want-it-buy-it kind of gals.  I peruse the fashion pages like nobodies business, but I think this was the only time EVER that I'd loved something from a magazine well enough AND (key factor here) actually been able to afford it, threw my magazine down, and literally ran to the world wide web to make this dress mine.  Not going to lie, I was majorly bummed about this loss.

I'm over it now, but it's crunch time, and I need to have an option nailed down lickety-split.  Just to put in perspective how dire this wedding guest dress quest situation is, I have a wedding to go to in 2 weeks, and no dress.  Well, that's not totally true...  I have 5 dresses, all of which are either totally inappropriate, or require altering in order to work.  But now that my dream dress is sold out, this is what I have to work with, and I need your immediate assistance choosing which one to wear.  They are as follows clockwise from top left:

~one dolman sleeved "granny floral," as my husband would call it.  I happen to love this dress, but it's about a million sizes too big for me, and has long sleeves (not to mention the fact that my husband thinks that this is about the least attractive thing on the face of the planet...not just in my wardrobe, but ever, and probably wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole while I'm wearing it).  But in a pinch (pun intended), it could be belted to give me a figure again, and I could suffer through if it were to be a blisteringly hot day (and Hubby could suffer through looking at me in it for one afternoon).

~one pink wrap dress that has gotten me through every other wedding, party, funeral (with a dark cardigan over it) for the last several years, and would do just fine in a couple weeks as well, but I need to repair it's hem first.

~one LBD that I'm madly in love with (mostly because I made it myself, and am amazingly proud of it, regardless of how simple the style is and the fact that a monkey could have also done a bang-up job with the pattern I used), but I still have this aversion to wearing black to a wedding.  Maybe if it was a formal evening wedding in the Fall or winter, but not for a Summer afternoon in a field.

~one I-have-no-clue-why-this-was-ever-purchased-in-the-first-place, borderline too short, a bit too tropical in pattern to pull off in Vermont, and a size too big for me frock.  I think this may have been an impulse buy back before we spent our Hawaii money on new bamboo flooring.  Like the Granny floral above though, it's actually pretty comfy, with a belt it could work to not look like a Hawaiian potato sack, and it has a nice little crochet detail at the neckline so I wouldn't have to fuss about jewelry.

~one long black maxi dress (totally appropriate for lounging around my house on hot summer days, but not at all appropriate for a happy, summer wedding).  And I bought it last Summer for a slightly plumper me.  So it needs to be altered a bit now (like all the rest of them, it seems) to prevent a disastrous wardrobe malfunction on the top half.  This one's really not even a contender for the wedding.  I just threw it in the picture to prove to you that I own something other than short, slutty, granny dresses.

My last option would be to make something entirely new, like the LBD, but in a different color or pattern.  It would be totally pushing the time limit I have to start from scratch, but it could be done.  I'm open to thoughts, suggestions, and unrelenting criticism...


Thanks for stopping by,
-Lindsey