Thought I'd share the major success I had! I have found the perfect bridesmaid dresses and in the end it was so much easier than I expected it to be! It took us quite a while to decide on the colour as we were really indecisive about colour scheme in general and my two girls are so completely different types. One of them is classic English rose with gingery blonde hair and the other one is Chinese, so very different, much darker complexion with black hair. Eventually we settled on silver for their dresses as that gives us a gorgeous colour scheme and flatters both of them. However, if you think about it, it is not that easy to find silver dresses as matte fabrics are out of the question (they will just look grey), very silky ones show off every lump and bump and none of us likes satin. Also we want elegant and classy, so a modest length and no cleavage.
A couple of weeks ago I googled 'dress silver' - not for the first time, believe me, but for the first time after scrolling through the hundreds of hits I found a dress I loved. It is a French Connection shift dress in a stretchy material with metallic threads, so actually silver. It was on the John Lewis website reduced to £39 from £140(!!!). I immediately sent the link to my maids and they both liked it, so I ordered the same evening and I ordered a selection of sizes to be on the safe side and didn't know when they would sell out as it was such a good deal.... They work really well on both of them, even though they also are completely different body shapes, my two girls look so beautiful - and both of them love the dresses. They already said they will wear the dress after the wedding too as they like it so much! It was really important to me that we find dresses they are absolutely convinced of too, I want them to feel comfortable and beautiful and confident. I really was expecting months and months of travelling around until we find a design that both like and that looks good on both of them and meets the criteria - and I was prepared to spend some substantial amount on the perfect dresses. Now it was so much easier and it was a fantastic bargain without compromising on quality and I can afford to give them nice shoes and bags and I am sure I will think of other ways to treat them 
Oh, here is a link in case anyone is interested:
http://www.johnlewis.com/343479/Product.aspx
