Surrounded by Red Shoes

Cousin Ariel’s wedding is coming up in April (I have three cousins getting married this year!), and I have a sassy black-and-white dress I’m planning to wear, which is finally making its debut (after spending four long years in the closet) because I’ve been working out steadily for the last four months. I have no idea what I was thinking when I bought it, but now I’m finally at the point where I can pull it off. Now that that’s been decided, I’ve been faced with a very serious dilemma – what shoes do I wear with it? I thought about doing strappy black shoes, but then recently decided I should go all out and pair it with equally sassy bright red shoes.

Now here’s the thing – I hate wearing heels, but I will do so for fancy events, and my cousin’s wedding definitely counts. I’ve also realized that my feet may hate heels because I always wear cheap, uncomfortable shoes, and maybe if I invested a little bit more in a pair of quality shoes, my feet wouldn’t protest as much. So I hopped onto Zappos and went totally hog wild, spending waaaaaaaaay too long perusing all of the red shoes. I had a bunch of strappy red pairs picked out and in my shopping cart along with some gorgeous black boots, and even though I knew I was going to buy a bunch to compare and then return the rest, I couldn’t bring myself to place my order and shell out nearly $2,000 at one time on shoes. Even with free shipping and free returns. I mean, come on.

Luckily, I held off and was able to show my shopping cart to Naan, who pointed out that strappy was probably not the way to go. I needed more shoe, so that the red would really pop. So I deleted all of the strappy pairs, and found a bunch of bright red closed-toe, pointy-toe, and peep-toe shoes, that reviewers had said were comfortable. (It was also nice having Naan look at some of the shoes with me, so she could bluntly point out that some of the shoes I was considering were beyond hideous, thus helping me narrow down my search.) I also took all of the boots out of my shopping cart and added a pair of dark blue Pumas that I’d tried on at Nordstrom’s a few weeks ago. I finally placed my order for nine pairs of shoes (Pumas and five styles of red shoes, with some duplicates so I could try different sizes) at 11:00 PM on Sunday night, and was beyond stoked when they arrived this morning. So far, I totally heart Zappos. Anyway, even though my purchase was still really high, at least it was only about a third of what I’d originally placed in my shopping cart.

Now, I'm really not one of those shoe-obsessed girls, but seeing these all together made me swoon. Aren’t they gorgeous? I’ll post more pictures of me wearing each pair so you can tell me which ones you like best. I’ve pretty much already decided, but I’d like to know what the masses think.