Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Quest for the Dress

It is the year for weddings in my husband's family. His oldest sister is getting married in November and his younger brother is getting hitched in just a few weeks. I have been to the bridal store quite a few times in the past two months helping the bride-to-be's pick out wedding dresses. That got me thinking about my own quest for a dress. Here is what I wrote about my experience five years ago when I was looking for a wedding dress of my own.

I do want to put a disclaimer on this post that this was my experience, if you had a wonderful wedding dress shopping experience than that's wonderful!

I actually started looking at wedding dresses before Michael proposed to me. I thought that it would be a good idea to go and look at them and see what was out there. This lead to frustration. I didn't want to try on a dress before I had a ring on my finger in fear that somehow he would change his mind and not want to marry me so I didn't want to start trying on dresses because that would be "buying the cart before the horse." I went to bridal shops and boutiques around the greater Des Moines area. To my disappointment there are not many around here. I could, if I wanted to, drive all over to the numerous small towns outside of the Des Moines area. I started wondering how women got married in this state, there is nothing out here. I was also very frustrated over the price of these gowns. I would find one that I liked and then I would look at the price tag: $1200!! You've got to be kidding? It's a dress that you will wear once for about 4 hours and never wear again.

This is what would normally happen when I would walk into a shop or boutique. I would walk in and take off my shoes (you have to take off your shoes at small bridal shops, don't ask me why.). I would then start to peruse the dresses. By this time very pushy sales women who weren't married would start asking me a whole bunch of questions. I would politely tell them that I was just looking. Then they would walk away for about 5 minutes. They would come back and ask me what style of dress I was looking for. I would respond by saying: "Something with sleeves and no beads. Also if its under $200 that would be great." They would look at me and stare at me for a few seconds before replying. I knew that they were thinking: "this girl is crazy". They would point to a rack at the back of the store, they would never help me or walk me to the rack; they would just point. I would walk to the back of the store where I was greeted by really hideous, awful looking dresses that were left overs from 1987. Most of them had big poofy sleeves and lots and lots of beads. While I wanted sleeves on my dress, I didn't want poof nor did I want beads, but all of these dresses were in the price range I had inquired about of the sales girl.

I would also get unsolicited advice about how my wedding should be, not my wedding dress, my wedding. At one shop after I had told one of them what I wanted my dress to look like she told me that I shouldn't put so many expectations on the dress. I should try on the strapless ones too and have a more open mind. This led into a whole talking to about how weddings will never turn out how we expect them to be and how I should just spend those few extra dollars to make my wedding the most important day of my life. I told her that while a wedding is an important day it will not be the most important day of my life. She stood back with a look of horror on her face. While I understood that I should have a more open mind I know what I am comfortable with and a strapless dress is not one of them.

At another shop I was looking around and one of them (sales woman) was trying to force a strapless dress on me. I was so tired of wedding shop clerks forcing the ever popular strapless dress on me that I said to her: "Why would anyone want to look like a slut on their wedding day is beyond me. A wedding isn't the celebration of what the bride looks like, but that she has abstained from sex and that two people are coming together in a union that was ordained by God. I don't want a strapless dress, I don't want everyone looking at my breasts, they are not there for everyone else, they are there for my husband!"* With that she backed off. I was really frustrated with her and everyone else trying to persuade me into something that I was not going to wear. After that experience I decided that I was should stop looking for awhile. I quit for about 2 weeks, in that 2 weeks Michael did propose to me and then I had a ring on my finger, it's a beautiful ring by the way.

One day I got an e-mail from one bridal store announcing their annual $99 sale. I was actually excited about this, even though I hate this store because its huge even though there is a lot of selection, but with a larger store there are more of those pushy sales ladies who aren't married. So I enlisted the help of two of my friends here in Des Moines and we came up with a game plan. The plan was to get in and get out. The store opened up at 10am on Saturday. Michael, who had been in Washington DC all week was coming in and was expected to be home around 11am. I really wanted to see him, but I wanted a dress so I set a really strict time frame. Besides you can't stay too long at those stores because you can get overwhelmed very quickly. My plan was to be done by 12pm.

Brenna, Angela and I met at 9:30am and drove to the other side of town. We arrived at the store and already there were a lot of people looking at dresses. We started looking at dresses, we found a few that I wanted to try on. So we went to go put them in a fitting room, we were greeted by one of the them. She told us that I needed to register with them to try anything on. So I went, not too happily, to "register". I had to give my name, address, phone number and date of wedding. We didn't have a date set yet so I didn't put one down. I also didn't include my phone number. They immediately asked me about my phone number. I told them that I might give them my number if I bought a dress but I wasn't making any promises. I didn't want one of them to call my cell phone in the middle of the day and waste my precious minutes. They never asked about the date. I went into the room with 4 options; 3 of them fit my criteria, one them didn't because Angela wanted me to try on a strapless dress just for fun. So I put on the first one. It fit and was beautiful. I came out of the fitting room and Brenna zipped me up. I stood on the little step and then did numerous spins for Brenna and Angela. Then Angela went to find me a veil to try on with the dress. While she was doing this one of them came over to see how I was doing. She told me that the dress would need alterations and that they could do that for me. I told her that it just needed to be let out a little through the waist and that it wouldn't take much to do that. She told me that it was a very complicated process and that they would be happy to do alterations there at the store, for a fee of course. I asked her if she knew how to sew, she told me no. I assured her it wouldn't be that complicated and that I would find someone to do it for me, like my mother. She also told me that I could get 15% off of the veil. I looked at the price of the veil $70!!! No way I could make one for $15 that looked exactly like the one that she was holding. Thankfully it was busy and she had to rush off to someone else who was spending more money than me. I had found my dress!

I went back into the fitting room and tried on the other dresses, they didn't "feel" right. I got dressed again and got my dress and went to go pay. At the cash register the woman checking me out started to ask me if I needed this or that. I told her all that I wanted was my dress, that's all. She then asked me what my wedding colors were. I started to say white, black and dark red, but I got out white before she started talking to another one of them. She then said to me that that was nice and she liked those colors. I only mentioned one. She then told me that she has been a bridesmaid 22 times. It actually re-enforced my suspicions of them, they are actually never married women who live vicariously through others in a business that can be ruthless, thus making them rather pushy. I paid $115; $99 for the dress and then $10 for the heavy duty garment bag, $5 for tax. I made it over to Michael's by 11:30am.


Did you have a similar dress experience? Did you know it was "the one" the moment you put it on?

*I also want to note that while I will probably never ever wear strapless you may feel very comfortable in a strapless dress. If you do happen to wear a strapless dress while in my presence I am not thinking that you are a slut; I did say this to a sales woman out of frustration and if I had to do over again I probably wouldn't have said it.

No comments:

Post a Comment