Given that today is Friday the 13th it seems appropriate for me share with you The Shoe Saga.  This episode is just one of the hiccups that I have encountered during what Mr Moore and I (jokingly) refer to as A Warwickshire Wedding’s pre-production stage.

Readers that have been following A Warwickshire Wedding for some time will doubtless recall that I bought my beautiful Bertie shoes, India,  last summer and in so doing completely ignored all the advice given by the bridal magazines, which is to choose The Dress first and then buy the wedding shoes with the said gown in mind.  Draw near B2B and listen to what I am about to say.  These bridal magazines know a thing or two about weddings.  Flaunt their advice, as I did, at your peril.

My failure to take their advice wasn’t, however, a case of wanting to throw the rule book out of the window in a rebellious fashion.  It was more that it simply never occurred to me that some shoes are less suitable to wear with a full-length wedding gown than others.  Indeed, although India and The Dress had never even been in the same room together, such was my conviction that they were perfectly paired,  I even arranged for India to be hand-dyed by the very excellent Shoe Dying Direct, so that they could be transformed from cream to snowy white.  To read more about that episode, take a look at Flowery Shoes not Jimmy Choo’s.

So picture me now, arriving at Designer Alterations in Battersea on Diamond Jubilee Saturday for my very first fitting, clutching my precious cargo, full of excited anticipation.  It had been a long journey, but the thrill of seeing my dress, which had been in the care of Mrs Adams, KoTD, since November, masked the tedium of two trains, two tubes and a taxi ride.

But my heart sank when I saw the dress and the shoes together. It was immediately obvious that the shoes were far too white.  The dress comprises two pieces of material, and whilst one is very white, the other is a much warmer shade giving the overall effect of ivory.   If that had been the only hiccup, I might have managed to have the colour stripped from the shoes but the real show stopper was the fact that India‘s little decorative flowers kept getting caught up in the hem of the dress, thereby preventing me from being able to walk properly.  Both the very helpful seamstress and Mrs Adams KoTD, agreed that the only solution was to find a pair of shoes that were plainer and had higher heels.

As soon as I arrived home, after a journey that was so much more tedious in reverse than it had been on the outward trip, I wrapped  each India shoe in tissue paper, laid them to rest in a lovely shoe box, and then set to work scouring the internet for a suitable alternative.  I quickly sourced a pair of high heeled Rainbow Club shoes called Dolcetto which I ordered and arranged to have delivered to a local bridal shop.  All in good time for the fitting that I had rearranged with Designer Alternations for fortnight later.

Now if you are blessed with normal feet then I’m sure my internet purchase sounds quite reasonable.  But for Mrs Moore-to-be with her funny, flat feet and strange turned-up pixiesque toes, buying a pair of shoes without actually trying them on was madness and almost certain to end badly.  Sure enough, when the shoes arrived I quickly realised that being on the rebound from India and seeking comfort in Dolcetto was a foolish move that was never going to work out.  They were way too high and far too tight. I could barely totter around my sitting room, let alone contemplate wearing them for an entire day.  So my relationship with Dolcetto was over before it had even begun and I  realised that internet shoe-buying, like internet dating, may work for some but not for me.  I needed to see any potential pair of shoes ‘in the flesh’ so to speak and was therefore much relieved to find a wedding shoe shop nestled in nearby Burton-on-Trent called Weddings2Go.

Unfortunately, however, whilst the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. First I caught a virus that took a while to shake off and then I twisted my ankle, which meant that I couldn’t get out to visit Weddings2Go in time for the rescheduled dress fitting at Designer Alterations.  So I had to cancel it.

There is, of course, a happy ending to this story: I finally managed to get to Weddings 2Go, courtesy of my Dad, a couple of weeks ago and settled for a very elegant pair of shoes with a medium heel called Cotton by Pink which I will be taking with me next Tuesday when I return to Designer Alterations. Let’s hope it’s a case of third pair lucky.