Boomer - Good luck!
I went through this last November when I was mother of the bride. Even though I needed a floor length dress, I tried on bazillion dresses, and settled on a jacket dress - it was far superior stylewise to the dresses I had tried.
So I vote for the jacket - It is very good looking.
I, like you, prefer slides. I finally found some sandal slides with a medium heel at Nordstrom's. Looks like taupe would be nice with that dress - really couldn't tell that much from the picture.
I also learned NOT to wear stockings. I hit a spray-on tanning salon (did a test run two weeks before the wedding) which was the answer to the no stocking problem.
Keep us posted
