Hi! How are you? I am fine. I am back from Virginia, and more importantly, I am back with two bridal stores under my belt.*

The first store was rather, erm, traditional. I should have known something was up when I asked the salesgirl to avoid beads and sequins, and she brought out: beads and sequins. This was because there was probably a grand total of three dresses in this store that were not, uh, bedazzled, and those were mother-of-the-bride dresses. Traditional, I said? That doesn’t begin to describe it.

Sidebar: You know how, back in the day, cartographers inscribed uncharted areas of nautical maps with Here be monsters? Well, they could have adapted that as a slogan and slapped it up right out front in the store window: Here be gowns. Thick, heavy, long. Out to eat your soul. Or at least make you trip over 20 cubic feet of train.

Being that I was there with my mother, and it was my first bridal store, after all, I embraced the experience wholeheartedly. Anything the salesgirl pulled off the rack, I agreed to try on. I tried on poufy. I tried on super shiny poufy. I tried on bedazzled grecian, and I tried on bedazzled one-strap off-the-shoulder-cape. I tried on a mermaid cut and thought I was going to fall down. I tried on a dress featuring something called rosettes and I thought I was going to start laughing, right there in the store, until I had to lie down on the floor. “Take a picture of this,” I whispered frantically to my mother, so the salesgirl would not overhear my mirth. “Take a picture take a picture now.”

Take a picture, she did.

No, no no. I think I can still squeeze through a doorway. We need to go bigger… bigger.

Rosettes, you say? I have some of those in stock.

After that was over, we headed to my next appointment at Nicole Miller. This was like a ray of white sunshine shooting through the bleak gray winter of my very being. Because these dresses… these dresses were light! These dresses were airy! These dresses enabled movement! These were simpler, and cleaner, and more modern, and, and… and there was nary a bedazzlement in sight!**

Bottom line: these dresses were much, much better. There were a handful I was kinda fond of, including this one:

Eh? Eh. Nice.

But in the end, I had a clear favorite.

Oh hai have u guyz seen my iron?

When I showed this picture to my dad later, he said it looked like I was wearing a Glad trash bag. Which sounds cruel, but I thought it was funny. I subsequently refer to it as my “Glad bag dress.” Sure, sure, it looks like someone crammed it in the back of the closet after a party and then forgot to steam clean it afterwards. But I liked it anyway, wrinkles and all. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. And hell, maybe I will never find a dress that I fall head-over-heels in love with.*** But still, even it had been love, I don’t think it would have been worth spending $1,300 for it. Ouch.

My mother, on the other hand, loved them all. Lesson: mothers are biased. One strapless dress made my armpit fat leap upward from the top as if it were attempting, in terror, to escape. “I don’t like this,” I said, gesturing to the armpit fat. “This is no good.”

“Oh whatev,” my mother said, rolling her eyes like an extra in Clueless. “Nobody would even notice that.”

This is not the kind of feedback you need, when you are shopping for Big Important Dress for Big Important Day. The kind of feedback you need is: “Woman, your armpit fat is trying to flee your body. This is not the right kind of look for you. Next.”

IN CONCLUSION: what an interesting experience.

NEXT MONTH: I will visit Los Angeles and do it all over again. Baby.

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* Just… bear with me, here. One day there will be a dress-free post. Promises.

** WELL OK. A slight bit of bedazzle. But it was easily overlooked.

*** I’ve been thinking about this lately. Is this another trapping of the wedding industry? This idea that a dress will complete us, complete our big day?