Drowning in Rivers of Satin

Growing up, I had the typical girly-girl dreams of marriage in a church, a long flowing train behind me, with all of my family and friends beaming as I walked up the aisle in some completely poufy, princessy dress. Somewhere along the way, I'm sure I also dreamed that flowers would sprout from the imprints of every footstep, and fairy godmother-like billows of glittery love would spread out during the wedding, too.

To sum up, I seemed to want a Barbie doll wedding.

And that's rather odd, considering I never was big on Barbie dolls as a kid. Poofy dresses however, I craved. If my parents would have allowed it, I guarantee I would have been wearing 50's era circle skirts complete with criolines to school every day. As it was, I was able to get out of the house wearing them fairly often. :)

So when it came to dreaming of a wedding dress, something completely utterly (insert swoon) romantic would be the only thing that would do, right?

Well, fast forward about twenty years, and the entire concept of wedding dress hunting has become a nightmare. I no longer have the slender, dancer’s figure that I did in high school. I’ve definitely swerved from girly-girl to tomboy. I avoid almost all things frilly, glittery, and most of all… pink. I swear that Cinderella's evil stepmother is physically in the dressing rooms, ready to cackle and condemn me-- only me, for both my size and horrible appearance in a wedding gown. Nightmare in White Satin-- that's sure to be me, once I get a dress. Whomever goes to a fitting with me is sure to have her eyes burned out of her sockets by the horror of the vision in front of them.

My friends, being the wonderfully patient women that they are, insist that I’m over-reacting, attempting to calm me down while at least visibly resisting the urge to roll their eyes at my frenzy. A couple of them offer to go with me, especially after early signs of my mom becoming Motherzilla-of-bride this summer.

I was fully prepared to be calling them in a panic this spring because omigoditsonlysixmonthsawayandidonthaveadress would be setting in.

But then the first dress sampling came with no fanfare. We walked right into a salon, no appointment, completely out of the blue, last Friday. We did this while we were on a hunt for shoes for my mother for her holiday party. The store next door to the dress salon was a specialized shoe store, and my mom wanted to “just pop in” to the dress shop “since we were there.”

It was quiet, being around 11 a.m. on a Friday. The woman working at the shop was quite welcoming and not at all pushy. They had a limited number of plus-sized dresses. Everything was sold off the rack there, so it was a “what you see is what you get,” plus alterations as needed.

The largest dress they had was a size 24. The woman also recommended trying on a size 22. This surprised me because everything I’ve read about wedding gowns suggested that they tend to run small, and I wear a 24 or 26 in street clothes. The dresses that were available were all in their protective bags, so we eliminated gowns by the decoration on the bodices to start. We came up with two to try.

And almost immediately, I groaned as I went into the dressing room—because this just HAD to be the day that I was wearing my comfy slack-off day leopard-print mesh underwear. JUST what I want to be showing off to my mother and some complete stranger as they help me step into wedding dresses.

Ugh.

Ah well, suck it up and deal. It wasn’t like I was wearing the right kind of bra for this, either. It was a basic utilitarian white day.

The first dress was the size 22. It was very pretty and light fabric, which I was specifically looking for. It was a straight-cut neckline with tiny spaghetti straps, champagne colored, and elegantly beaded all over the bodice. The a-line skirt and train were plain. The train was designed to bustle nicely in back.

My mom helped me into the dress—I was surprised just how much help was needed to get into it. But it closed! A Size 22! And it wasn’t pulling! Mentally I was bouncing and screaming in glee that a 22 was fitting. Because THAT meant I had some size room for dresses, and I wasn’t doomed be trying on sizes 28 or 30, as I was lead by the bridal magazines to believe would be happening.

The dress now on, I tiptoed, dress hem lifted in hands, over to the alteration area and up on a dias. Mirrors surrounded me. And there I was, standing in my first wedding dress ever, looking in the mirror at the reality of what was coming up in my life for the first time, my mom beaming as she helped adjust the train to trellis down the stair.

Holy shit, this is weird.

And I really, really liked the dress. I’ll put it on just a smidge off of feeling like a princess. It fit quite well, too—in my incorrect undergarments for the special occasion, only a few spots would need tucks and alterations. Nothing needed to be let out. It was all taking in. The sales clerk gave me some ideas on how they could alter it, including adjusting the back if I preferred to have a ribbon lattice look, but did declare that it was fitting quite well for a first try, especially for wearing an everyday bra.

My mom loved it, too.

But I resisted the urge to do “THIS ONE!” immediately, given it was the very first dress I’d tried, AND we hadn’t checked out the reputation of the salon or their policies.

I went back to the dressing room to try on the second dress.

To sum up the second, it didn’t fit well at all—the fabric was heavy and sat on me even heavier. The cut hit me wrong. Although for the first time in years, I felt very tiny in the boob department—whomever this dress was cut for must be a fat chick porn star who’d gone over to Europe for the huge implants—because the bustline was easily four times the size of mine. That, or it was designed for me to rest one of our cats during the wedding ceremony. Because… damn. It had to be somewhere in the M-range for cup size.

That is about all that should be noted about that second dress.

So back to the first dress…. ;)

Last night, I talked to Mom briefly just to catch up on things from the weekend after she left, thank her again for all that she did for us for the house, and share some amusing stories about the combination of a Christmas tree and four month old kittens.

I mention to her that I did really like that dress. She gushed about it over the phone. But then I said "But I don't want to rush into it too quickly. I mean, it's the first one that I tried on..."

She replied, "Well, you bought the first house you saw, didn't you?"


She does have a point...

;)