The First Bridal Appointment

So here I am at my first bridal appointment. Like I mentioned before, I’m a little bit nervous, and I’m feeling a little weird about the whole thing. You see, I went alone. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s not such a big deal (and that’s what I was telling myself) but typically a girl takes at least one person along with her when she goes bridal dress shopping. The salespeople always tell you that you look great, so they’re no help. I mean what’s a girl to do when she needs her best peeps at her side to tell her that this dress makes her butt look huge, or that dress displays her flabby arms nicely? This is the situation that I found myself in.

But it’s really my own fault. I know that most of my girlfriends live out of town. When I had previously talked about bridal dress shopping, I have always mentioned going to Dallas and doing the shopping. That way my friends can come along easily and maybe some of my family can join in the fun too. Now, we’ve already crossed that road with my mom and know that she’s not enthused about going along. And maybe that just put a damper on the whole thing for me, I’m not really sure. But finding out about this sale at the last minute like I did, I really had no choice. Even my friends that are located closer to Austin are still either on the North side of town when I’m on the South or they’re a good thirty to forty-five minutes away by car. So I enter the store alone.

I meet with the bridal consultant that they’ve assigned to me, Amy. She seems nice, and she has a REALLY nice funky hair cut that I like. She gets me some catalogs to look over and I hand her my dress style numbers that I had thought ahead to bring with me. She’s a little shocked that I’m so prepared, but takes it in stride. She goes ahead and measures me up and lets me know what size she would recommend that I order. I knew ahead of time that I would order a dress in a size or two larger than my normal size, so I was ready for that. I wasn’t really ready to hear that I needed a dress THREE sizes above my normal street size…oh well. Guess I should have been doing that working out thing, huh?

Anyway, luck was with me and my three top favorite dresses were in the store and available in my size, or so Amy tells me. She was able to pull about 10 of the dresses off of my list, so I felt fortunate to be able to try on so many. She whisked me off into a dressing room and I got into my undergarments (she provided me with a strapless bra since I had thought about bringing mine and promptly forgotten all about it!) and was ready to go. Since this isn’t my first rodeo, I knew better than to attempt to get into any of the dresses by myself. I called Amy back in and we tried on three dresses that didn’t require the petty coat. I loved them all. Yep, you read that right.

Then we put on the petty coat and tried on the other seven dresses. I didn’t love all of these. Which was a good thing! And included in this mix was the one dress that had brought me into the store. I got all excited when I saw it on the hanger in the dressing room…a little thrill of excitement went through me. But when I put it on, it was not what I had remembered seeing in the photos and on the website. Luckily, Amy came to the rescue and said that there was the same dress with a different skirt style and she trotted off to find it for me. Unfortunately, it didn’t come in my size, but she had found a much smaller one that I could ease into just for looks. I put it on, and held my breath in anticipation of seeing myself in the dress that I had been drooling over for the last two months…and was severely disappointed. I liked it. But it wasn’t as flattering as I had thought that it would be. I still liked the look of it and the style of it, but it was really heavy and hot and like I said it just didn’t sit exactly right on me. Now, I tried to keep in mind that it was the wrong size and all, but it’s hard to picture when something doesn’t fit, right? Right. But even with all of that, I couldn’t take that dress off of my list of possible dresses.

At the end of nearly two hours of trying on dress after dress, and putting some of them back on one more time, I was able to get my list of favorites down to two dresses that didn’t need the petty coat and three dresses that did need the petty coat. I know, I know. It’s still FIVE dresses – all of which I loved! – so it’s not a great starting point. But seeing as how I started with over ten dresses, I thought that I had made good progress. But at this point, I realize that I need help. I can’t make any further decisions without another opinion telling me honestly how I looked in each dress, since Amy was really not much help, bless her heart!

And since I was just on my “lunch hour” from work, I made the decision to schedule another appointment for that evening and find someone (even if it was the bum begging for money on the corner of the interstate) with me to the later appointment. I needed guidance. I needed an objective opinion. I just needed help! Not to make up my mind for me, but to help me along the process.

I needed to call in some reinforcements….

Did anyone else attempt to do this on their own? Am I just the only crazy bride out there that would even THINK of doing it this way?