I'm starting to look for a dressier summer dress for my brother's wedding in Florida at the end of August, and I'm not liking what I'm finding so far. Everything is either way too matronly or way too teen, or is sleeveless. Is it too darn hard to make a short-sleeved dress that is actually pretty?

I won't be buying it until the beginning of August at the earliest, since I won't know for sure what size I'll be in by then (I'm hoping a 20, since I just started wearing 24 pants--yay!), and to be quite blunt, I don't know what stores other than my usual plus size ones even carry clothes in that size. Does Macy's have decent dresses that don't cost too much in 20? I really don't want to spend more than $60 on it.

Oh, and the reason I'm looking at short-sleeved dresses is that I'm definitely getting that sagging skin on the underside of the arms. I'm just hoping the neck skin doesn't look as bad when I'm done.

Kathy, do you prefer a brick-and-mortar store so you can try the clothes on? I have a large mental list of online plus-size stores, but less so on brick-and-mortar ones.

I think that most large department stores have plus sizes (certainly up to 20); I don't know about prices, though. I bet you can look on their websites ahead of time, though, to see if you even want to go check them out.

Right now, I'm just looking, but I think I'd rather try on the dress before buying (which is why eBay isn't an option as much as I'd like it to be). At least, then I'll know if the style is right, I like the color on me, and the length is what I'm comfortable with.

I have no problems shopping online for casual stuff, though, because it's just not as important if things are perfect since all clothes are transitional for me right now (except for socks and shoes).

I love 3/4 length sleeves.

Oh, I'd love to find that, but not likely in a summer dress, unfortunately.

Looks like neither Macy's nor Nordstroms goes up to size 20.

I rather like this dress, although I wish the model's hair wasn't covering up the sleeves.

Kathy, where were you looking? Macy's does: [link] and Nordstrom's does: [link]

Or did you mean not in the brick-and-mortar stores?

YAY MAC!

And hee, Jesse, happy as I always am to encourage any budding hockey fan, I'm afraid Kat's Canucks are going to wipe the ice with the Bruins.

Silly me! I assumed "womens" in the category listing meant all of their womens clothes and then would be subdivided further into regular womens, plus sized, and petites. Guess not.

Thanks for the links, Steph! I'll be checking them out.

However, I really should be getting back to my five page paper that's due in, oh, 7 1/2 hours. I've got 2 paragraphs written so far. All the research is done; I just gotta crank it out. Archives in tne News--I'm doing my paper on the Yad Vashem/Google collaboration that was announced in January.