The HoCo season can get pretty stressful for many people; one common stressor is getting the right dress. Last year, my mom’s good friend ended up finding both my HoCo and Sweetheart dresses for me. So this year, it has been hard figuring out where to even start.

When I went HoCo dress shopping at Oak Park Mall, I went to multiple different stores and barely saw any dresses I liked. All of the dresses were either colors I didn’t want, like dark green or red, or they were too glittery.

After not having any success shopping for dresses at the mall, my mom and I started to look for dresses online. We ordered eight dresses and none of them were the “one.”

Ordering dresses online is difficult because it’s hard to see what they really look like. For example, one of the dresses I ordered had sequins on it. It was nothing like the pictures online and it looked like it had the sequins from a children’s princess dress thrown on it.

When you order online, it is also hard to figure out what size is best because sizing is a little different on each website. For instance, some websites size dresses in smalls, mediums or larges while others use numbers like 2, 4 or 6.

Another problem with ordering dresses online are the return policies. On one website I ordered a dress from, you can only return a dress for store credit within 30 days of the delivery date. I didn’t end up choosing the dress from that website, but now I have to order another dress from said website to get my money’s worth.

I never realized how picky I was when it came to dresses until this year. Thankfully, I ended up finding a dress I love even though I am borrowing from a family friend. I understand that I might have started shopping for HoCo dresses a bit later than most people, but it should still be somewhat easy to find the right dress without having to borrow one.