The Dress

Finding the dress can be painful and joyous, hot and exhausting, and a whole lot of fun. For me, it was 2 weekends of time with my mom and girlfriends, and being totally cool standing around half naked and laughing a lot.

The first day at the first salon I tried on MANY dresses. I had a consultant who was great at listening to me and running around finding dresses for me to look at and try on. She was very efficient and knew her stuff. Amongst the thousands of dresses, she pulled out THE DRESS.

It's a little different, but very now. It's simple, but with just enough adornment. It's shaped so I'm not freaking out about my bumps, lumps and "squish". I fell in love with it... but still had to look at some "cheaper" options, so off to David's Bridal I went the next day.

There I was shocked by the bright white lights. The large number of brides and prom goers in this very large showroom. But there were a few dresses I thought looked pretty good on me... and they were so much less money then the one at the fancy bridal salon.

After another weekend of re-trying on my narrowed down list of 3, I could only visualize myself in the fancy, well fitting, slightly different dress which I clearly loved more then the others. I had figured this would happen and had already scheduled an appointment to get my measurements and order the dress... you know just in case.

The day before my appointment I was to order the dress, I went to the designer's website and found that MY DRESS had been discontinued. Slightly worried, I went to my appointment to order my dress. I mentioned the discontinued status on the website to my consultant, and a wash of worry came over her face. She said, "Then you aren't going to get your dress." Oh well that made me feel better! But I just smile and try to not freak out because I could always fall back on the David's Bridal dress and I was also pretty sure the bridal salon would not be needed this discontinued dress anymore and I could probably have it altered to fit and maybe might even get a discount to help cover the cost of the needed alterations.

After my consultant calls the designer, argues with her boss about why the dress was still on the floor, she asks me to try on the dress one more time to see if I could buy the stock dress. Amazingly it fits perfectly! My consultant continues to apologize and comment on how calm I am. Since calm is far from being my middle name, I am actually pretty amazed too. But what was I going to do. Maybe I should have pitched a fit, because I didn't get the discount I had hoped for, but since I'm no haggler, I paid for the dress and checked it off my list.

Now, the dress has been cleaned and mostly repaired, and is hanging in a closet at my parent's house. The lacing for the corset back is not the original lacing, so I'm having a new one made. My good friend, Amy, has a dress by the same designer so she has sent me her lacing to see if it will work for my dress as well which I will try out at my first alteration appointment this Thursday.

Hopefully I'll continue this calm about my dress through the next few months. What can I do, right?