Marshmellow Fluff

Brace yourselves people, I found my wedding dress! It took one whopping day and 50 try-ons to find, but we did it!  Now, if you know me, even if we have never met and you only follow my blog, you probably know I’m a little jagged around the edges but still lovable, sweet and romantic once you chip away at my sarcastic, although charming exterior.  That said, I’m not the kind of girl who has dreamed about dress shopping since I was a kid.  I was too busy riding my bike, and cutting the hair off my Barbie’s so they could join the military and play with my brother’s GI Joe’s, to worry about dresses and china patterns.  So I wasn’t sure what to expect with this whole wedding dress hunt.  I did scour the interweb for intel on and was suprised to find there wasn’t a lot of information out there on the experience.  So I went in blindly.

The day started out rough, like I “started” that morning, kind of rough.  By the time I was supposed to be leaving to pick my mom up from the airport, I was deep in the throes of, “I am too bloated to fit into any of my jeans, so instead I will just sit here and cry in the middle of all of them piled on my closet floor.”  I did my best to calm myself down by staring at my reflection in the mirror, and repeating, “Stacy, you are not that ugly and not that fat and look at the bright side, you are getting married!  And that is a huge deal, especially for a fat ugly wildebeest like yourself.”  Okay, so I suck at pep talks and I think I scared Paul by my erratic pre-wedding dress shopping behavior, though he didn’t hide under the coffee table like Jack and Charlie do when I act crazy.  I managed to pull myself together, squeeze into a pair of fat jeans and the wedding dress hunt began.

Although it was more than I expected, it was everything I hoped for. My mom was there, I found a dress and it is perfect.  I didn’t however, expect many other things happening.  For those ignorant-to-dress-shopping-brides-to-be, these helpful tips are for you:

1. You will be standing naked in front of a stranger. This was a shock and when I say shock, I’m putting it lightly.  Once I found this out, I would have left the dressing room and called the entire thing off, had I not, you know, been naked!  I wasn’t sure what I expected, which was clear since I was wearing gladiator heels, a tattered lace g-string and a stark white strapless bra streaked brown with self-tanner.  I’m not the kind of girl to be naked in front of strangers, let alone the kind of person to stand in front of anyone naked without diligent pre-planning.  Had I known the day would require nude conversations, I would have picked modest underwear and heels that didn’t look like I was looking for a pole to grab onto and do upside down splits while spinning to the floor.  But then again, any kind of heels paired with a g-string screams, “Throw dollars at me and tell me I’m pretty.”

2. You will think more than once, “This sucks, I am never going to find a dress.” The first store we went to, I tried on 15 dresses and each one was uglier than the last.  By the time our appointment was through I wanted to give up and get married in jeans.  No dress “fit me”  and I don’t mean literally,  I mean fit me, as in every dress made me look like I was playing dress up or I was a lesbian softball player that was trying really hard to look “straight.”  I was so far from what I thought I wanted that I began to think that my type of dress didn’t exist. Stay strong, sift through the piles of lace,heavy silk and ribbons and you will find one that screams, “I’m the one!”

3. It may still be “the one” even if you don’t cry. I don’t like crying in public because no one is a pretty crier.  They always do that squinshy faced ugly cry, things start oozing and the LAST thing I wanted was to start crying and gushing onto this beautiful dress.  I was able to hold back the tears but once they put the veil on it became a difficult task.  It’s an overwhelming process and my emotions were a little slow to catch up to my brain so I managed to not cry but I know the dress I picked is perfect.

4. Once you buy your dress it enters into the “Dress Protection Program.” Don’t be alarmed when they tell you that you won’t get your real dress for months.  This is actually a blessing because you will be tempted to wear your dress to bed, in the shower, to work, sitting on the couch and during all other everyday activities.  If it is the right dress, you will want to wear it all the time. I love my dress and if I brought it home I would be writing this post while wearing it.  My mom had the briliant idea of telling the sales lady my wedding was a month earlier than it actually is. This way I am sure to have ample time to get my dress and all the alterations.  I suggest you do this…and then do your best to refrain from wearing it everyday the month leading up to your wedding.

5. Take pictures. Even though they say you can’t, sneak them if possible.  It is overwhelming to keep track of every dress and some dresses you think you’ll love may not translate in photographs.  That said, cameras will be hard to sneak in because, if you missed it the first time I said it, YOU WILL BE NAKED!

6. The dress size chart was clearly made by a man, a really stupid man. I can only assume this because no woman in her right mind would have made that screwed up sizing chart.  When it came down to getting measured for my dress I was a size 10 (which is 4 sizes larger than my normal everyday dress size) and when they measured my hips the woman said I fell into a size 18!!! That’s when I stabbed her in the eye with her tape measure.  Seriously, the whole naked part was traumatic and then to add insult to injury, I was now told I was 14 sizes larger than the size I wear in everyday clothing. The best I can tell, only a man would come up with such an ass backwards measurement scale.  So, don’t freak out when they measure you and tell you that you are a size enormous, because they are stupid and you are gorgeous!

And now…here’s the dress!