We have a wedding to attend this weekend, and although I expected to be able to wear a spring dress, it doesn't seem like spring has quite hit the Midwest yet.
So that meant that my closet full of strappy dresses suddenly looked a little barren of options. Pair that with a slightly more casual wedding --- my husband is wearing jeans as the best man --- and I am at a bit of a loss of what to wear.
I'm a pretty firm believer that it's better to be a little overdressed than underdressed, but I really only have two nice dresses with any sort of sleeve. Both I have worn many times and to weddings with many of the people that will be at this wedding.
However, we're focusing on saving and have had a few budgetary crunches this month, including having to get our pipes snaked when our kitchen and bathtub refused to drain. So I knew that I needed to select a dress from my own closet.
But I love dresses. I love all kinds of dresses, and anytime we go somewhere, my favorite part is finding a new dress to wear. So I started looking at dresses online, knowing that I wouldn't purchase one but just enjoying looking.
However, the more I looked, the more I thought maybe I could just find a cheap one. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go even more above our budget than we already are. Maybe it would be OK to splurge.
The more I looked at dresses, the more I wanted one.
I realized that what I was doing was simply tempting myself with something I shouldn't do. I know I can rationalize spending money on a new dress --- we hardly ever buy new clothes --- but it wasn't a priority at the moment, and it certainly wasn't a necessity.
I tried on the dresses in my closet yesterday, and I have a perfectly viable option. It's not new, but I haven't worn it to a wedding in a couple of years, and it still fits me well. It has three-quarter sleeves and I think is a happy medium between dressing nicely and not looking completely overdone.
What we spend our time on often ends up being our priority, it ends up being what we do. What we focus on can make something small seem like something big.
I have found when I focus on not having something, it's all I want. However, when I focus on what we have and what we have prioritized in our lives, I feel so much more satisfied.
It's all what we spend our time on and what we spend time thinking about.
So I'm going to think about how much fun this wedding will be and how much more we will enjoy that $20 somewhere other than on a stupid dress that would get stuck in the back of my closet after I wore it. It's not important, and I'm not going to think about it anymore.
