White Dresses

Today Mom and I went dress shopping, and I came home with wedding dress! I will not describe it here or post pictures since I don't want Mike to know anything about it, but I can tell you how the day went.

We went to a store in Downtown LA that sells only sample dresses. For those that haven't gone through the process of buying a wedding dress, in stores they only come in one size and dressing assistants either clamp you into them if you are smaller than that size, or do their best to squeeze you in if you are larger. If you want to buy a certain style dress, they then measure you and order the dress to be made for your size. Lucky for me, I'm pretty close to the sample size used by most designers, so I not only have the good fortune of seeing how these dresses actually fit me, but I also have the option of buying the sample. Sample dresses are tried on by lots of people or used in shows and are discounted for sale as a result. So, going to Glamour Closet was perfect for me. It wasn't a large store; in fact we drove right by it the first pass, but they had a good number of dresses, and they were all designer dresses. I'm not one to put a lot of stock in designer labels, but as you thumb through the racks, you can tell that all these dresses were gorgeous. Even the ugly ones that you would have to pay be money to try on were pretty.

All told, I tried on around 15 dresses. We were there for at least 3 1/2 hours. We were so engrossed in what we were doing we also forgot to feed the meter and we got a parking ticket. The first dress I tried on I loved. I also really liked the second one. 13 dresses later Mom and I decided I should try on a totally crazy one that had petals all over it that looked absurd on the hanger. It was an Oscar de la Renta and it was stunning on. I looked like a Snow Queen (in a really good way, I promise). It was down to this one and the first one, which happened to be by the same designer. I tried on the first one again, and knew that it was made for me. We thanked Oscar and the fantastic assistant that zipped around 30 zippers (most dresses have two, if you can figure that out), purchased the dress for less than half the retail price and brought it home.

Currently my dream dress is hanging in its garment bag on the back of our bedroom door. Mike has strict instructions not to even think about looking at it. I'm going to try not to prance around our apartment in it over the next 10 to 14 months.