it fits me
it's ridiculously fluffy, glittery, and awesome
it's around $50
it would help if it lent itself to being drug around beaches, mountains, and on top of a dirtbike for the various photos I care to have taken in it.
and may be a splash of color?
I mean, I guess if it comes around and it's awesome, and my size, and a $100, that's OK, since I never went to prom. I really have no other wedding plans. I was thinking of sending people $7 with the invitation and a map of the closest Subway to the beach. This is an upgrade of my plan to cater breadsticks and calling, instead of sending invitations. (Who doesn't like breadsticks?!). Renting a loudspeaker is still on the menu. I'm sort of hoping Jesse develops an affinity for planning stuff, and jumps all over it, and invites me at the end.
Anyway, $7 for about 30 people (I'm generously overestimating the number of our friends and relatives who like Subway), leaves me with near $10,000 of a typical wedding budget for the dress (I'm guessing here). I would like to use about $50 of that on the dress, and the rest should go towards my vacation in Costa Rica, and possibly wind surfing (I heard it's an expensive start up sport), and a new snowboard. This is [imaginary] money managing 101 here, people.
So, I decided that may be I ought go into a shop and try on some dresses to see what size I am (I learned on Craigslist they run small) and what I like.
I called Alfred Angelo in Huntington Beach on Saturday, but they were incredibly snotty. However, I thus found out you need an appointment to try on wedding dresses. That seemed to be as inconceivable as making an appointment at Sears to buy a blender, and my complete lack of planning almost ruined my plans. However, my girlfriend Heather had gotten a baby sitter just to make this outing possible, so I called David's Bridal. They were less snotty, and had a 5:30 appointment.
We went in and went straight to frolicking in the racks, and pulled some awesome dresses off the guessed 'size 8' rack. I only wanted to try on three styles, to see what I liked. But I have a dysfunction when it comes to beads and shiny things, and I was pretty sure I loved every dress in there. Anyway. In the middle of all this excitement, and 6-7 pulled dresses later, we got unceremoniously plucked out of the aisle and sent to the front desk, where I had to make up things like my wedding date, my wedding location, and the type of venue it was going to be. Thankfully, I didn't have to go into details about my $7 Subway sandwiches/loudspeaker plan, since it's not fully developed yet and misunderstood.
Apparently, they frown on you pulling your own dresses. Instead, they put them back (as I watched..) and had me pick out (the same) dresses from the catalogue. To then deliver them to me in size 4. Which, we learned, I am not:
But not before I was stuffed into some sort of a spandex Spanx girdle type "slip" with a bra corset over it.
Let me walk you through this: 34B boobs in a Spanx slip = 34 boobs. They disappeared into the ribcage. That Spanx is good stuff for your ass, and it's JUST as good for your boobs, if you needed it there. Putting the corset bra over the slip is to bring the illusion of boobs BACK. It's all very weird. I guess the "slip" protects the inside of their bra contraption from sweat? Which makes sense, cause once you're wearing two layers on spandex and wrapped in 20 lbs of taffeta, you're sweating. Profusely.
And I got to pick out pretty awesome gold shoes. My high heeled Crocs flip flops were found to be offensive.
Then we got to trying on dresses. I wanted to try on a few, but the catalogue only had 3 that I liked, the rest were on that rack I can't touch, and I didn't want to put up a fight. I was too sweaty, and the girl helping me was super nice, and just let us more or less do our own thing.
Can I lift this over a dirtbike? Is it too much fabric to drag about a beach?
Heather warned me about the 'grandma lace potential' on this one. I think she was right. But still. Pretty.
It was pretty awesome. Except they kept bringing size 6 dresses, and I thought that may be "breath taken away" was a literal concept. There was lots of giggling. And sparkly stuff. I was done by dress #4, it was hot, I got an idea of what I liked, and I was feeling lightheaded from holding my breath while Heather zipped them up.
I LOVED two of the dresses.
The longer, more ridiculous one, I asked to try on in a size 8, which I guessed intially, but wasn't sure. I also took off the ghastly spandex girdle. It fit perfectly, and now I kinda want it, even though I wanted a two colour type dress before.
Like this one:
A friend online helped me find the dress above on preownedweddingdresses.com, but having tried some on on real life, the one selling there would be too big. Even with the fake boob girdle. :(
Even the back on the Saturday dress is pretty:
I briefly thought about spending $900 and showing up at home with a dress, but decided to sleep on it. That would be a gross plan deviation. Heather wasn't helping, cause she liked the idea of TWO wedding dresses. Long for church, short for beach. I hear it's all the rage now. 80% of Craigslist posting start with, "I ended up with two dresses".
When we pulled out own dresses, there were a couple cheap ones I liked, but they weren't in the catalogue, so I never got to try them on. The girl helping us said it's their policy not to let people get their own dresses, because "I someone sprains their neck lifting a 15lbs dress, we can't pay for that". So, I don't know how they even sell those, "other", uncatalogued (older?) dresses. Sigh.
So, I now supplement my usual Craigslist trolling with model numbers and stuff. I found the awesome dress for sale in Dallas. In a literally "breath taking" size 6. May be if I hit 24HourFitness just a l i t t l e bit harder.. ?
Jesse says he's not supposed to see me in a dress. Some sort of a tradition the Russian weddings lack, kinda like the cake, the bridesmaids, and the whole engagement thing. (We call the wedding bands 'engagement rings' and don't actually have sparkly engagement rings. Although I wonder how much of the Western influence has caught on in this regard). All of this makes me wonder if it's OK to post pictures of dresses? I'll probably go ahead and add them in the morning and tell Jesse to not nose around in my blog should he feel 'badlucked' or something :D
I think Heather is nuts - the lace on that one is gorgeous. Kind of doesn't match up with the sweetheart neckline and sparkly bits, but what I can see of the lace itself is marvelous.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Fiona about the lace. But the reason why those girls on CL ended up with two dresses is because they bought one right after they got engaged and changed their mind, or because they kept shopping after they bought a dress. They didn't wear them both, and it's not not unheard of but it isn't all that common either.
ReplyDeleteNo. The lace was tragic. I'm telling you. When you see it upclose, it wasn't dainty, pretty lace. It was ugly lace.
ReplyDeleteThe lace would probably rip easier when hoisted on a dirtbike. ::mellow
ReplyDelete