Here Comes the Bride(smaid)

THE WEDDING is in less than four months, which in wedding time is the equivelent of about 43 days. The bride seems to be very well organized and calm (I say "seems" cause you never really know what's going on under that avalanche of catalogs and lace that is the bride-to-be.) Anyway, today I finally went to try on the bridesmaid dress. Let's chat about that ok?

Mom and I dressed for a day of sipping champagne and being fitted for a bridesmaid dress with lots of excited questions from the hustling and bustling sales girls.

Not quite.

We actually drove past the store once and then as we turned around and slowly inched down the road looking for the shop we suddenly found it. Mom's face dropped with horror and I burst out laughing. In the windows were cardboad signs announcing "Prom is Here". And indeed it was, although the sign would have been more appropriate had it read "Prom is back...FROM HELL." The dresses reminded me of dresses my Barbie Dolls wore. And I had Barbies in the 80's, so you know, I might have had the ugliest Barbies's there were. (Anyone remember stabbing Barbie in the side of the head with her beautiful crystal earrings? I digress...) I mean, these were like the costumes that a 20 year old would make for a play set at an 80's prom if they hadn't really researched 80's proms. You know what I mean?

And I LOVE 80's proms.

Although I've never been to one (before you start rushing my inbox with information about the live interactive dinner theatre show called "Awesome 80's Prom" remember for one moment that I used to work for a live interactive dinner theatre and try to understand how much those words still haunt me) 80's proms seem like a total dream. The music! The bangs! The poofy! So much poofy! Poofy hair! Poofy dresses! I love everything about it. In fact, Kris and I were playing this game the other night where we would each come up with two places in history that we could travel to together and we had to agree on which one to go to (yeah...this was a few cocktails into the evening) and I threw out "30's Swing Dance Club or 80's Prom" and I was a little startled by how quickly we both said "80's Prom". (There was much more weighing of options and discussion involved when we had to decide between "Beatles come to America" or "Fat Elvis in Vegas"...I realize that the knee jerk reaction would be Beatles...but after lengthy discussion we decided on Elvis, one of the many reasons involved did have to do strictly with being able to laugh at the crowd...and at Elvis) ANYWAY! Yadda Yadda, 80's proms are great.

So there I was swimming joyfully in a sea of sparkles and rhinestones, much like when I go to Trax on a Monday, and all of a sudden I heard "Yes?! Do you have an appointment?" And from there on it was all business. I reported the item code number of the dress our bride had chosen and was handed the gown with a curt "This one is very popular" and a gentle shove into the "dressing room" which was really a sort of mock up area with shower curtain rods and a couple mirrors.

"Wait...what size dress is this?"
"It's a *"
I paused, then laughed a small laugh, then looked at my mom for help.
"I think I'm going to need something a little, a lot, bigger"
"No, you just try this one on to get a general idea, then we take your measurements when you order and do alterations when it arrives."
"Um, oh. Well...ok."

I'm a bridesmaid virgin. This is my first time assisting a bride. Please be gentle.

I'm not making negative comments about my weight. In fact, I've been in the dubdub and have been doing great thank you very much. I'm making a comment that you can't just tell a size ** to try on a size * to "get a general idea" because the general idea will be "I would like to jump off the roof now."

So I shimmied my way on into the dress as much as possible. It was a little hilarious. I did like the dress (way to go Trixie!) but realized I had no idea why I was trying it on...would it matter if I didn't like it? The other girls had already bought theirs, this was a sealed deal. I just wanted to get out out out because I felt slightly like a mouse being swallowed by a snake all of a sudden.

Then OF COURSE, the dress had some boning up top and long story short...I got stuck. Stuck with my arms in the air and the dress covering my face but not quite able to get the rest of itself past the ta-ta zone. I couldn't pull it up and I couldn't pull it down. This is how I was going to die, smothered to death by taffeta in a makeshift dressing room. Death by bridesmaid dress. Now, for those of you who have never been stuck in a dress...and I imagine of my blog readers that's a small few, it's a terrifying situation. Especially when you are extraordinarily claustrophobic like me. As cheerfully as I could muster I yelped out through the fabric of the dress and through the curtain hanging precariously from the shower rod which was hanging precariously from the ceiling "Um, hey mom?" And God bless her, mom just says back from her chair, "What?" "Um, can you come here a sec?" "Why?" "JUST COME HERE A SEC!" It reminded me of this one time when I was a teenager and I got stuck in a dress while shopping with my mom. Or this other time when I was in junior high...and I got stuck in a dress while shopping with my mom. But thankfully we managed to pull the dress off without any damage to it's boning. Or my boning. Ha ha, "boning".

We took some pictures, which you don't get to see, and be thankful for that my friends. And we also took a picture of the store...but I've decided to leave that off the blog to be respectful and for kharma reasons. You have to be careful how much fun you make of the place that will be altering your bridesmaid dress. Needles can slip...hems can rise...all sorts of witchcraft can be done. The dress however will be very pretty and bony and nice and you can see pictures of the real one in August.

I would like to make my first wedding toast to the Bride Trixie for picking a pretty dress that is reasonibly priced. (See dress above, although our accents are "Robins Egg Blue" instead of "Baby Ass Pink")




Cheers!