One Sunday afternoon, I had a guest whom I was unprepared to entertain. Not that the guest was unexpected, just that I'm unprepared like that. I'd been counting on my own personality as being entertainment enough, yet I wasn't feeling well, so I was a little boring. We needed something fun and amusing and new.
And that's how I ended up in a wedding dress one Sunday afternoon. I was so pretty.
When we were in high school, Amy and I used to go try on prom dresses just for fun. We'd try on the ones we'd never wear, because they were too revealing or too fluffy or too expensive. Sunday, when we were at the mall, we thought of that idea, too. But then we realized that prom dresses are usually slinky and the act of trying them on with our post-college bodies would probably be about as depressing as trying on bathing suits in a communal dressing room with the contestants of the Miss America pageant. But wedding dresses are, for the most part, floofy. You're supposed to look like a princess and be pretty and virginal, not sexy.
So we went to the bridal shop, our stories all worked out. I was getting married in April, and she was getting married next October. We only realized upon entrance to the shop that you had to register just to try on dresses. Then they assigned you a consultant. That's an awful lot for a pair of girls just looking for a lark. But by that time, I didn't want to just walk out, so I filled out the registration card, though I somehow accidentally put my old Boone contact information. I also had to put down a shoe, bra, and dress size.
Now, I've had this body for a while and I'm familiar with it. So I know my dress size. But the registration lady said that I should put down the size up one from my pants size. In case you've never seen me, I'll tell you that I'm not the most proportionate girl out there. I don't mind so much being pear-shaped, it's much better than being shaped like, oh, say, an apple or a yellow squash or a scallion. But I did resent being forced to choose my dress size based on the biggest part of my body. I considered lying about my pants size. But screw it, this is the way I am shaped, and it's fine. Plus, if I'm taking up these people's time and screwing somebody out of a commission, I might as well be honest about my child-bearing hips. So I told the woman my true pants size, and I didn't even make a point of mentioning that my large hips would result in my fetching more camels for my dowry in many third-world countries.
The next stage was to pick out dresses. Since I was confident that I was being forced to pick dresses out of the wrong size section, I only picked two of the allowed four. Then I chose shoes, which consisted of me picking the least ugly of the two pairs of flat shoes they had available. I'm a tall pear.
I was assigned a dressing room and my own wedding consultant, Melissa. I had to put on these ridiculous undergarments, a so-called bra that felt closer to a corset and a long slip with lots of layers of fluffy crinoline. I looked like I worked for Miss Kitty. Melissa was impressed that I had gotten the bra on myself, because it snapped all the way down the back and was very snug. When I was putting it on, I had determined that I would die before I asked help from a stranger to put on a bra. I won't tell you how I got it on, but there was hopping involved.
And then came the dresses! Melissa helped me slip the first one over my head and then started zipping it up, before saying, "Oh. This is much too big." Hmm. Imagine that. I can't tell you when I felt more glad that I'd told my true pants size: when they had to clothespin the first dress just to keep it from falling off, or when I finally tried on the dress that fit perfectly, the one that was three dress sizes smaller than the original. Trying on wedding dresses is an ego boost for a girl anyway, because you just can't help but look lovely in those things, but dropping three dress sizes in half an hour sure does help.
I don't know what it is about wedding dresses that make girls so pretty. Maybe it's the association of youth and happiness, maybe it's all that white, maybe it's the gut-clinching undergarments. I am not the most self-confident about my appearance, but I sit here and tell you that I was just so pretty. Then Melissa put on the matching veil and tiara, and I could not get enough of my own reflection. That morning, I would have told you that I was not a tiara kind of girl, but that afternoon, I was all, "Bring on the tiaras!" (I was back to not being a tiara kind of girl when I saw the price tag for $170, about half the price of the dress.) I came into that shop in a threadbare yard sale dress and flip flops, feeling kinda sick and not having showered, and then all of a sudden I was a princess.
I am not suffering from wedding fever, nor am I twitching to the beat of my biological clock. Twenty-two years old and unmarried is acceptable, and frankly, I'd recommend it. Twenty-two is young. Twenty-two is old enough to do anything, and young enough to still be able to. So my Sunday afternoon is not a sign of my internal pining for a ring. Trying on wedding dresses is just fun and silly and ego-boosting. How can I explain this concept to men? Women, of course, already understand. (If they don't, I can recommend a helpful wedding consultant who won't give you a hard time when you tell her, "We're actually not looking to buy anything today, just try on.") Considering I haven't seen any sort of decline in the popularity of pirates or explosions in males as they age, I don't see anything wrong with a healthy game of dress-up among girlfriends. Especially when I end up looking like the prettiest tall pear ever.
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