Bridal Hijinks

Mom and Dad arrived on Tuesday and Mom and I immediately started the search for "The Dress" . I have not been planning my wedding since I was 6 and my Barbie didn't have wedding dresses, she had suits and glamorous evening dresses for soirees, so I really had no clue what kind of dress I wanted. I have spent months flipping through bridal magazines in the hope that something would spark my interest. Nope, Nothing, Nada. So we were flying blind and I was hoping that the "experts" in the bridal store would be of help.

We started at Queen and Spadina and went down some dingy stairs where a Korean woman asked us to remove our shoes before entering the dress room. The walls were lines with samples from frilly to really frilly to covered in a Dolly Parton quantity of sequins and beads. The quality was not good either so we left without trying on anything. The next stop was a little more boutiquey..boutiquesque...Like a boutique. Where we were politely informed by another Korean woman that we had to make an appointment. So we carried on the the place where Jana had bought her dress. I knew immediately that it too was owned by Koreans...How did I know? Well the name said it all "Bridal Fashion Fraire". Now you may ask youself, "What exactly is a Fraire?" A Fraire is either a Fair or Flair either of which have been horribly mangled by Konglish. So into the lions den we went. I asked if there was an order to the dresses, like perhaps they were arranged by size and fluff factor. The owner replied "Oh No it doesn't matter just pick what you like and we order in your size" Yes I understand that but if I jam my size 10, DD body into a size 6 sample, nobody is going to be happy. Now one might think that if you are trying to trick someone into buying a 1200 dollar dress that you might want to stroke their ego a bit and make them feel good by making the dress sizes smaller...No the Bridal industry actually has their sizing numbers larger than your actual size. So if you normally wear a 10-12 you wedding dress size is a 14-16. Thanks guys.

We waded through racks of dresses and came up with 6 that seemed possibilities including 1 Cinderella dress just for Mom to see even though I told her numerous times...I am too short for that much dress. I will look like one of those cakes from the 70's that had a Barbie jammed in the middle and the cake was her skirt. So we got the fantasy out of the way and Mom agreed that yes indeed too much dress makes me look wider than I am tall. Not good. There was a woman helping us and she whipped me in an out of dresses pretty quick. I basically acted like a giant Barbie standing in my panties while dressed and undressed.

Once again if you are trying to get someone to spend 1500 dollars on a dress you might make the lighting flattering. I expect to look like crap in the Suzy Shier dressing room when I'm paying 19.99 for some pants but really the 2 bare Flourescent fixtures did not sell me on any of the dresses. In fact it kind of made me want to home and hide in my bed until the summer sun is back.

Anyway we quickly came to some conclusions about what worked and didn't work for me and the salesclerk brought us some more dresses to try on. A number of the dresses had corsetted backs that the saleslady tied up making me feel like Miss Scarlet unfortunately I didn't have a bedpost to hang on to. The one the saleslady liked the best was strapless with a wrap style and shirred chiffon....and rhinestones. It did make me look skinny which seemed to be of prime concern for her. I thought it was too flashy for my Backyard Barbecue Wedding. The saleslady switched out and spoke to the one coming in. In Korean she said "that's the dress for her, you need to convince her". So then we got lots of "Its perfect your you" It's your dress" "You need this dress" . I'm not a fan of pressure sales tactics. I got the info on the dress and we were tired so we went home to think about it.

Fortunately Mom fell out of love with that dress overnight and by Wednesday we were back on the hunt. Jana said that there were a number of Bridal shops near their apartment on the Danforth so we went there. The first shop we tried, once again required an appointment so I made one for next week. We passed by a shop that was spread over 2 stories, had chandeliers and BIG dresses. We passed on even darkening their doorstep. Finally we tried another smaller store which happened to be the less fancy version of the one I made an appointment at. The dresses were much more my style, less Charro...more Ingrid Berman. And we found The Dress. 400 dollars cheaper than "Not quite The Dress from yesterday". I didn't want to have buyers remorse so we just got the information and I will go back next week to order it. I found it on the internet so if you want to see, send me an e-mail and I'll send you the picture.
This was the last time sensitive thing that needed to be done before Christmas so hopefully the pressure's off for about 6 weeks. Now its time to focus on work again. I have about a dozen seniors applying to Unversities in the US and the deadline is January first and the panic has started. So back to work I go.