Saturday... Saturday was not awful. I would detail Brandy the MOH forgetting we had plans and the driving around town trying to catch each other, but that's neither interesting nor the point of this entry.
Nope, as promised, I have the story of my search for a wedding dress. And, as promised, there are many horrific details- so many, in fact, that I have cut out many of the more excruciating moments in an attempt to make the account more readable.
We decided to go to the place Brandy got her prom dress from, especially as it was the only place we could think of that didn't require an appointment (something we were too stupid to realise we might need).
We get there and the assistant is this "sweet" pregnant girl probably in her late thirties. My first true realisation that I am not the type for this sort of thing was when she asked me for both my dress size and my bra size. When I looked blankly at her about my dress size, she asked me my pants size. Never mind the fact that I wear men's pants almost exclusively, I haven't bought any clothes in about four years. Well, scratch that, I've bought some clothes, but the sizes on those have not been numbers.
So, Preggers already thought I was crazy because I didn't know that basic information that apparently women are supposed to know. In my nervousness I managed to remember that I have some women's jeans that are 11's, but they're from the 70's, and you can't find that size anymore. Preggers stared at me for a while until I said that I inherited a bunch of my mother's old clothes. She continued to stare. At that point I realised I could either launch into a lecture on the cyclical qualities of fashion and explain that the clothes of the 70's are very similar to the clothes of today, or I could shut up. Already frazzled, I decided to shut up.
We've been in the place not ten minutes at this point.
Brandy rescues me from making a further ass of myself by inventing a bra size for me. (Upon arriving home and searching for ten minutes for a tag that hasn't totally washed out: she was dead wrong but I doubt it mattered much.) At this point Preggers assures me that I'm probably a 14, which is OK because wedding dresses are sized "way wrong" (no not "way wrong", they're sized smaller because they require more fabric, but I suppose she was interested to assure me I was not a fat cow, or something), and then she asks me whether I have any thoughts and what sort of things I want.
I decide to stick to the two most important details, I can deal with hem lines and waist lines later, but let's start with the important stuff. I reply that I'm looking for something in a green and I definately want sleeves. She stops, turns around and stares at me again. I admit to her that fashion is not exactly in my favour at the moment but those are two things I absolutely require. She shows me a couple of white dresses with trim that you can choose the colours on. These are totally wrong, but I don't know exactly how to tell her that. Preggers, however, gets that I'm not enthused.
I suppose she worked that out because I was not squealing like the other girl who was being shown things. That just wasn't an image I could uphold at that point. I was not in a mood to squeal about something I was reticent about in the first place and about which in the last twenty minutes I had been stared at more than twice and made to feel totally stupid.
Anyway, I take that point to say that what she's showing me really isn't what I wanted. What I wanted was something more like the bridesmaid dresses I had seen on their website. So she takes me over to the other side of the store. Lo and behold, there is a poster with styles on it. There are three that I might consider, and I tell her so. The first one (the one I actually hoped for) does not come in the colour I wanted.
So, I end up in this thing with spaghetti straps and a scoop neck. The whole time I'm in the damned thing, on top of just the general self conciousness of being much more naked than I like to be in public, I feel like my tits are going to fly right out the top any moment. And Preggers is going on about how great it is.
To make the whole ordeal a lot shorter, I had to try on three white poofy things with trains that I didn't know what to do with. I had to try on two that made me almost embarrassed to leave the dressing room, and two that wouldn't even fit.
To be fair, though, the last thing she found for me to try on was almost on the mark. It didn't have sleeves (it had a stupid jacket with shoulder pads and a jacket that reminded me of the early 90's) but it didn't feel awful to wear and it was at least a shade of green.
But, after that one, we ran. I was absolutely worn out from feeling lost and bewildered the entire time, and Brandy was sort of pissed because she knew that's how I felt but Preggers failed entirely to be helpful in the least. We were in there maybe forty five minutes.
The way I see it, I have learned a valuable lesson. Next time I go anywhere, I will at least know my damned sizes. I believe I might even preface trying anything on with the statement that I am not really a dress-wearing type person and I absolutely do not want to be a full blown bubblegum princess.
Today I talked with Amy the Costume Designer. I explained that I was looking for an ankle length A-line empire waist skirt with sleeves and a conservative neckline in a dark green velvet. While she did wish me best of luck, she said that maybe next time I ought to go in, give them that description (rather than let them "help me") and see how close they can get to that. If all else fails, she knows a woman in the area who loves to make wedding dresses.
I hope that I can leave this as my worst experience (because I honestly don't see how it could be worse), and that perhaps I have learnt something from it.