Welcome to a great sport and a fabulous forum, Jenn!

Like the other girls have said - a properly fitting bike is the most important thing. If it fits well, it feels good and if it feels good, you will ride it! Hopefully you can find a bike shop (BS) with a good attitude, but if not, as the girls say, ignore the way they act and test ride lots of bikes. You want to feel the difference in real life before making the purchase. Look at lots of brands and lots of styles and when you figure out the dimensions (or if you can have a professional tell you which dimensions to look for after a proper bike fitting), you can narrow down your choices...then you can look at things like which BS you want to deal with and choose the brand that way, or you can make your choice based on the best components for the money, or even use colour as your deciding factor.

Fit first. The rest will come.

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~