Shop for Bridesmaid Dresses with Your Bridal Party

My friend Elizabeth, the bride, wanted to involve all the bridesmaids in choosing a dress. I was a bridesmaid (hooray!), and it certainly sounded like a good idea to me. I knew I wanted to stay away from certain styles like strapless dresses because I'm prone to always tugging at them. I'm also a big anti-fan of teal or orange so I wanted to vote against those colors. As for dress length, above the knee seemed horrifying to me though I was pretty sure floor length would not agree with some of the other 'maids.

We're all of the internet generation, and since the bride and bridesmaids were on opposite coasts, it made sense that buying the dress on the web would be a sensible idea. Not only could everyone see the pictures, there tend to be some pretty good deals online, too. You do need to order early, though, and our bride was not prone to procrastination when it came to her wedding planning. So, we tried email.

Each day, I would open my inbox to find a bunch of emails and replies with links to various dresses. At first, I tried to click on them and reply with my opinion. Pretty soon, it was getting out of control. Too many emails, too many out-of-sequence replies, and too many links!! How we finally managed to settle on a dress, I don't know. But, we all liked it! :)

With Elizabeth's wedding now over, we did what any aspiring internet entrepreneurs would do in this situation: We created a website. We've created a company that addresses the needs we had while searching for bridesmaid dresses. Namely, we wanted to integrate chat and a real-time feel with online shopping.

Shiny Orb is the only website that allows many people to shop together for bridesmaid dresses.

We are proud of two distinguishing features of Shiny Orb:

• Search by price, neckline style, strap style, and designer: Shiny Orb aggregates bridesmaid dresses from a variety of vendors allowing you to search all of them at once. While other vendors such as TJ Formal force you to sort by designer. In our experience, we cared about the cost and we cared about the look. Narrowing by designer would have been more useful towards the end of our search process.
• "Co-shop" with your friends with a unique social shopping widget: If you have a chat account on Gchat, Yahoo, MSN, or AOL, you have everything you need to use the widget. Using the shopping tool on our website does not require any additional sign-ups or downloads. Basically, once on our homepage, choose the "Shop with Friends" button and log into your chat program in the tool box. Follow the instructions to invite your other friends who are currently online and connected on chat. Now, you guys can see what the other person is browsing through the "picture-in-picture" windows. If you like what she's looking at, click on the picture and presto! You're on that page, too!

Shiny Orb has a very large collection of dresses include those by designers like After Six, Alexia Designs, Alfred Angelo, Alfred Sung, Allure Bridals, Alyce Designs, Bari Jay, Betsy & Adam, Bill Levkoff, Bonny, Dave & Johnny, DaVinci, Dessy, Do You Love Me, Eden Bridals, Forever Yours, House of Wu, Impression, Jacquelin Exclusive, Jessica McClintocka, Jordan Fashions, Landa Designs, Love, Mackenzie Michaels, Mary's Bridal, Moonlight Me Too, Moonlight Val Stefani, Mori Lee, Raylia Designs, Romantic Bridals, Saison Blanche, Sophia Tolli, Venus, Wa Wa by Watters, Watters, and WToo.