If the women on Say
Yes to the Dress are to be believed, shopping for your wedding dress is the
most insanely magical experience of your life, falling on the excitement scale
somewhere around the level of a child going to Disney World for the first time,
or being accepted into Hogwarts. I, however, was looking forward to wedding
dress shopping somewhere closer to the “just a cleaning” day at the dentist
level (ultimately not painful, but still not my favorite way to spend time).
Having never been perfectly proportioned to fit into any
standard-sized clothing, shopping for clothes has regularly been a nightmare
for me. My waist is small, but my persistent mini Buddha belly prevents me from
pulling off anything that’s form-fitting in the midriff region. My ample chest
is ridiculous and often requires tops a size larger than the rest of my upper
body necessitates, thus creating weird bunching and bagginess anywhere that
isn’t boob. I’m on the shorter side of average height, so I am blessed with
neither long legs nor a long torso (it seems only fair that every woman should
get at least one of those), and the less said about my ass, the better.
While this is all annoying enough when shopping for regular
clothes, trying to find flattering formalwear is a whole different circle of
hell. As a teenager I regularly needed nice dresses for concerts (band geek
alert) and then, of course, there was prom dress shopping. Having been built
like Betty Boop since age 12 or so, I never got the luxurious years of being
able to pull on a simple slip dress that resembled a nightie and look
fantastic, so I would have to bypass the juniors’ department to wade through
the ladies’ racks of clothes, desperately searching for something that would
cover everything it needed to cover without looking frumpy or like something my
mother would wear. Then, after trying on dozens of options, if there was one
that at least minimally met these requirements, I was sold, usually not because
I was in love with the garment, but simply because I wanted to be done
shopping.
Shopping for dresses as an adult hasn’t been much different,
except now that it’s age-appropriate to try to look sexy I have to deal with
options that don’t seem to understand that going bra-less is simply not an
option for some women, and wearing a strapless bra is basically an exercise in
uncomfortable futility. When I was a bridesmaid for a friend’s wedding two
summers ago, I begged her to please pick out a dress I could wear a regular bra
underneath, and when she did it was like a gift from heaven (other than the
fact that the dress had to be too tight across my chest in order to fit everywhere
else (I refused to shell out tailoring money for a bridesmaid dress)).
After finding a couple of nice-enough dresses that I don’t
completely hate over the years, I’ve held onto them and rotated through them
whenever a cause to dress formally has come up, praying each time they fit well
enough to prevent me from having to go through the struggle of shopping for a
new one.
When Remus and I got engaged, I asked if he would care if I
wore a traditional wedding dress or not. He said no, but wondered what I would
wear instead.
“I dunno…something simple off Macy’s sales rack that doesn’t
look like hell on me?”
When this idea didn’t go over well, I suggested a jeans and
t-shirt dress code for everyone, which would undoubtedly make us the most
popular wedding in everyone’s memory.
“Why don’t you just get a wedding dress like a normal
bride?”
Easy advice from someone who’s never had to care if his
chest was properly supported or what his butt looks like in anything.
My mom and aunt were very excited at the prospect of wedding
dress shopping with me, probably because the last time they did that it was the
1970s and their long-term memory isn’t what it used to be. They booked flights
to Chicago for a long weekend of shopping, I started doing my research on dress
styles and tried to predict the direction we’d go in (ball gown: not even as a
joke, A-line: universally flattering and a likely contender), and ultimately
booked appointments at nine different bridal salons while they would be in
town, because I was getting this one particular wedding chore done ASAP so I
didn’t have to think about it anymore. If I didn’t find my dress in one of
those nine shops, then jeans and a t-shirt it would be (and I was fairly
confident Remus would still say “I do” if this was how things shook out).
Our first stop was David’s Bridal, which I thought would be
a good place to start in order to try on the various wedding dress silhouettes
and narrow it down to my best options. Side note: This was also the same
David’s Bridal where I purchased the aforementioned bridesmaid dress and was
more or less called a liar by one of their salesgirls when I wound up getting
my dress in the same size as my street clothes, even though “bridal sizes run
about two sizes small, so that can’t be your street size.” I really don’t know
what to tell you, lady, because I have a closet full of clothes at home all in
this same size…
This time around I was paired with a salesgirl who never
accused me of needlessly trying to trick her with my clothing size, but who
didn’t really seem to know what she was doing. She was splitting my appointment
time with a bridezilla who was picking out her maid of honor’s dress, much to
the apparent chagrin of said MoH. While the salesgirl would try to walk Bride
Kong through the shades of purple they had available, I would awkwardly step
into the dresses she had absent-mindedly handed me, then back out of the
dressing room for her to zip/button/lace me up when she didn’t come to the
dressing room to see how I was doing.
I didn’t already own a strapless bra, so I was freewheeling
it in this try-on, and the results were…not good. Unflattering sagging, fabric
bunching, waistline hitting nowhere near my natural waist…looking at myself in
these sample gowns confirmed every reason I had for wanting to avoid this
experience altogether. My mom and aunt desperately flipped through David’s
Bridal’s lookbook, trying to find styles that might work better than what I was
putting on, while I just wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge and go have lunch
before my humiliating afternoon appointment at another store.
Then arrived my savior: a veteran salesman in a natty bowtie
who was was absolutely horrified at the state of
the dress I was in.
“Oh, honey, no,” he declared as he happened by with an
armful of dresses going back to the stockroom. “We need to cinch you in and
pull you up. May I?”
I told him to go for it, and go for it he did. Grabbing the
top of the bodice he yanked my boobs back up to where they should be (“Sorry,
but we get really friendly here”), then grabbed a handful of plastic clips
whose sole purpose is to clamp sample gowns so you can see what the dress will
look like once it’s tailored for your body, and started gathering and clamping the
back of the dress.
“There,” he declared, spinning me back toward the mirror.
“That’s how it’s supposed to look.”
And with one giant tug and a few plastic clips, he had
managed to give me the perfect Jessica Rabbit-esque hourglass figure that every
woman aspires to have. He asked what I liked and didn’t like about the dress
(nice shape, too much bling for my taste, shiny satin is gross), then told my
salesgirl to go pull a couple more samples for me to try. After a few more
rounds of “zip, tug, clamp,” I hadn’t found my dress, but I had found my
perfect silhouette, so when we went to my next appointment, I knew exactly what
to ask for, and every dress that salesgirl (who thankfully knew how to clamp a
sample gown, unlike the first girl I worked with that day) pulled made me look
how I wanted to look on my wedding day, and I left Shop #2 with two top
contenders in mind.
We only made one more shopping trip the next day, and after
trying on another series of flattering dresses in my perfect silhouette, I
couldn’t stop comparing them to one from the previous day, so I cancelled the
remaining six appointments and went back to Shop #2 to purchase my wedding
dress (which I have been promised has the proper structure that it can be
tailored to support me without the need of a strapless bra, and the prospect of
being able to go bra-less for the first time since I was 10 is more exciting
than I would have thought it would be).
Now if only there were a most cost-effective way to have all
of my clothes fit well than dropping a couple grand on singular items, then
also paying for tailoring.
So thanks to all the bridal salon sales associates out there
who know how to expertly wield a plastic clamp in order to help women find
their perfect dress shape, and special thanks to Samantha at Weddings 826 in Chicago,
who wasn’t upset that I wasn’t a bubbly bride-to-be and didn’t cry when I chose
my dress, and who, when I declared that I think veils are stupid, simply agreed,
“You’re right; veils are kinda stupid.”
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