Wow, this year flew by really quickly! We've been so busy that, well, I totally forgot about Shiny Orb's anniversary. To celebrate, Elizabeth and I went out for ice cream again. This time, we're in chilly Boston, but no weather is too cold for ice cream. Elizabeth got coffee ice cream while I picked mint chocolate chip. I guess taking the blurry self-portrait with a lousy camera is officially a tradition now. :)

Lots of changes over the last year, that's for sure. Shiny Orb moved from Berkeley, CA to Boston, MA. We started out with 1,425 bridesmaid dresses and now, we've got 13,214 dresses including wedding dresses, wedding reception dresses, bridesmaid dresses, mother of the bride dresses, and flower girl dresses. Along the way, we picked up a lot of prom dresses and everyday dresses for which we've created a sister site, DressMob. Shiny Orb also got a major redesign (we look way more grown up now!) and under-the-hood tweaking. Our original mission was to bring social shopping to weddings, and over the past year, that social shopping aspect has evolved into our Shiny Orb dressing rooms. Since we launched the feature, nearly a thousand dressing rooms have been created!

It used to be just the two of us, but now we've got our fashion extraordinaire Liz bringing you amazing inspiration boards on this blog every week. We've also become fans of lots of wedding blogs, made new friends, and gotten to know a bunch of people who have been really supportive. Thanks, everyone!

Image Credit: controltheweb

By Jennifer

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We took off from Berkeley, CA and made our way towards Napa Valley. Things were not so hilly once we got to Vallejo, and except for me missing a "Bicycles Prohibited" sign on the freeway, riding to Napa was a good time.

We stayed at the Arbor Guest House, a gorgeous bed and breakfast within walking distance of downtown Napa.  We popped our complementary bubbly, which was a great way to start things off. The hospitality at the Arbor Guest House was great. The staff, especially co-owner Candy, was very helpful in recommending where to go.  The wine and h'ordeuvres before dinner was also delicious.

The next day, we rode our bikes to visit wineries. Our first stop was the Domaine Chandon, where I wanted to learn how sparkling wines were made. The tour was so-so, but the view of Napa from their vineyards was amazing. The second stop was a highly recommended boutique wine shop called Jessup Cellars in Yountville. We had a great time tasting and talking about the wines with Sheryl, an employee at Jessups. She helped Tim (who is not much of a drinker) discover that he likes port wine.  We had a fabulous lunch nearby.  I heart French onion soup and salad with goat cheese. Afterwards, we spent the afternoon riding some pretty good hills along the edge of the valley.

It was sad to leave Napa the next day, but we both had to head back to work. All in all, it was great to see the area on bikes. Hon, can we take a bike trip every year? :)

by Elizabeth

It's time for part 2 of our Shiny Orb summer update.  We launched our site back in December with just a few thousand dresses aggregated from a couple of online stores.  Today, we have ~20k dresses from across 17 online stores including Macy's, Zappos, and Modcloth.com.  In the past few weeks, we've added wedding dresses and everyday dresses to our repertoire.  We've grown quite a bit, and this is just the beginning.  

You'll need to stay tuned to see our next big launch in a few months.  But, here's a hint: we're changing the look and feel as well as the user experience of our site.  And, that's just the beginning.  Very exciting times this summer.  We'll be sure to catch some rays in front of our computer screens.  

As always, we'd love to hear from you.  Drop me a line at elizabeth@shinyorb.com.

by Elizabeth

Read the title of this post out loud 10 times.  :)  It's time for a 2-part Shiny Orb update to remind us where we've come from and discuss where we're going.  This week, I want to touch upon social shopping and community on Shiny Orb.

Though it's been less than 2 months since publicly launching the Shiny Orb Dressing Rooms, we've received a fair bit of attention from prominent tech journals for this concept, including the MIT Entrepreneurship Review and Social Commerce Today.  Just last week, I wrote a guest article on GigaOm explaining that I see e-commerce transforming into a more social experience.  The next wave of shopping sites will be hybrids between stores and communities.  

On Shiny Orb, the Dressing Room feature is just the first step to socializing the wedding apparel shopping experience and building a community.  Last week, we added Love It buttons and Facebook Connect features.  In the next few months, Jennifer and I will be refining and adding social features on Shiny Orb to build community and make shopping social and fun.  We strongly believe that wedding apparel shopping is inherently a social experience.  It's necessary to move that online, and we would love to hear your experience with our Shiny Orb Dressing Room (for a $20 Amazon gift card) and thoughts on this topic.  Drop me a line at elizabeth@shinyorb.com.

I hope everyone is having a great summer!  The big news doesn't stop here at Shiny Orb.  I'm excited to announce 2 new happenings.

First, I'd like to welcome our new Shiny Orb blogger, Liz (not to be confused with Elizabeth).  We're super excited that Liz will be working with us for the summer, focusing on fashion trends and inspirations for your fall and winter weddings.  She's already done a few posts on denim bridesmaid dresses, organic dresses, and neutral modern bridesmaid dresses.  We love the inspiration boards she's already put together and look forward to her upcoming posts.  Liz hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, where we knew her from high school as well.  But she now lives and works in New York where she is enjoying the big city life.  We are so happy to welcome her to the Shiny Orb team! Here's what Liz says,

Hello everyone! I'm thrilled to join the Shiny Orb team as a style blogger and thanks for reading my posts. Elizabeth and Jennifer have been hatching this business idea for as long as I've known them, and I am super excited about where Shiny Orb is headed. Feel free to write me at liz@shinyorb.com to share your wedding style tips or questions!

Secondly, so many of you have asked us when you'll be able to sort dresses by color.  Well, we've finally done it -- I'm pleased to announce that we now have a color filter in our search tool.  As always, please let us know we can improve the experience and what new features you'd like to see on Shiny Orb.

By Jennifer

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Gosh, it's been two weeks already! When Tim and I decided to get married we knew we wanted a low-key kind of wedding. Being the couple we are, planning was a relatively stress-free affair because we kept things simple.

To that end, we decided to have a small ceremony with just parents and grandparents in attendance. We picked the same day as graduation, so we got our doctorates in the morning and ran off to get married at a beautiful roof garden across the street from campus. (My parents also got married on their graduation day!)

Not wanting to leave out our best friends, we still opted for bridesmaids and groomspeople. Everyone looked fabulous all dressed up.  So with my good friend and photographer Sam Lipoff, we went about the city of Boston taking some fun pictures. We even took the water taxi across the harbor so we could capture the gorgeous Boston skyline in our photos.

We held an evening reception, where we met up with the rest of our friends.  Tim and I chose a hotel bar with a swanky, private red lounge, and we partied until closing time. I love how after all the guests have gone home, Elizabeth was still ready to order just one more drink, barefoot. It was a great few days. :)

By Elizabeth

Jennifer and I are pleased to announce that Shiny Orb Dressing Rooms are now open to all. We're extremely appreciative of the awesome help we've received from our beta testers. They've provided us with ample feedback and support.  So after intensely developing, testing, and iterating side by side with these brides, we are confident Shiny Orb Dressing Rooms is a feature brides and their bridal parties are going to enjoy.

Honestly, we thought up Shiny Orb Dressing Rooms out of frustration. It was just so hard to shop together online for bridesmaid dresses for Elizabeth's wedding. So, we decided to make things right for Jennifer's wedding and built Shiny Orb Dressing Rooms. We knew there were so many more modern brides in the same boat with their web savvy bridal parties scattered about. As more and more women move around the world to pursue their dreams, passions, and careers, we know this is an ever-increasing trend. That's why at Shiny Orb, our goal is to create an enjoyable social shopping experience for bridesmaid dresses and wedding apparel.

Create your own Shiny Orb Dressing Room today and let us know what you think!

By Elizabeth

When we started Shiny Orb back in December, Jennifer and I envisioned a website where bridal parties could browse and shop a large selection of dresses together. By large selection, I mean LARGE. Today, I'm pleased to announce we now have over 10,000 bridesmaid dresses and other wedding apparel on our site. But, we are just touching the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned for more dresses to come...

Check out bridesmaid dresses and other wedding apparel from our new online retailer partners: eDressMe, Charlotte Russe, PromGirl, Zappos, and Buy.com.  By adding these retailers' dresses to our style-based search, bridal parties can now peruse dresses from 300+ designers.

Here are some of our favorites:

Search our entire collection today!