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I don't much care for the way I look. Shocker! I'm sure 99.9% of Everyone in the Whole Wide World feels the same way. The worst part is how unforgiving I am about my own imperfections even though I have no similar judgmental feelings about anyone else. (Except people who wear open toed sandals or flip flops too small so their toes flop off the front. Own your shoe size, people.) I don't think I'm a total mirror-smasher; I have nice hair, uniformly sized toes, small shoulders. In general, I'm okay with my neck up view but further down I just see belly, cankles and ass ass ass. This isn't a story about me and my giant ass though, it's about what happens when someone who hates her ass tries to buy a wedding dress.
I started looking for a dress in March. I came across one that I thought might be perfect with the jacket Chris had been considering. I sent the link to my sister, k-dub and cantaloupe for their opinions, but then I experienced the first of many Psychotic DressBreaks — I became consumed with the thought that if I waited too long the dress would be gone and what if it was the perfect dress and I never found anything else that could compare and oh my god what do I do *click* *purchase* done.
Of course, moments after completing my transaction I heard back from everyone, all of whom mentioned some issues the dress presented. All issues that I suddenly realized I agreed with. Oh well, that's what free return shipping is for. I did try it on once it arrived just in case it was perfect, but it wasn't, in any way, and it was promptly returned. Dress count: 1.
Over St. Patrick's weekend, Sister and I went up to RI to see if we could find any cute, preppy, New Englandy dresses there and also to lay around and eat a lot of seafood. It turns out early March is jackpot time for shopping in Newport because everything is on sale to make room for summer. While wandering down Thames Street we spied a white dress in a store window and went in to have a look. It was a pretty dress, strapless, sort of a blush color. Not entirely my style though and it was over $200 which, while low for a wedding dress, would be throwing money away if I ended up hating it. While we were debating the pros and cons of the dress, some other women came into the store and the owner came up to all of us to say: "By the way, ladies, everything in the store is $10 today." Dress count: 2. OBVIOUSLY.
Dress #3 was a white eyelet Isaac Mizrahi from Target.com that was 70% off and therefore also $10. It ended up being too casual, but again, $10.
On the first Saturday in April I took the train to Short Hills to go to the fancy mall with Mom and Sister. We went to all the usual suspects: Saks, Nordstroms, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales. But it was the very first dress I tried on, in Macy's, that I bought. It fit perfectly, was inexpensive AND on sale. Both Mom and Sister loved it. I liked it. Mostly. While in the dressing room I was excited about its fit and the relative ease with which I'd found a dress, a totally affordable dress at that. But there was something missing. The dress was fine, but it wasn't anything like the vague, half-formed idea I had started to picture once dress shopping began. As soon as I got it home, I started to hate it. Dress count: 4.
By now it was getting to be zero hour if I wanted to try the bridal store route, like David's or Priscilla of Boston and places like that, since they require such a long lead time. So in the midst of another full-on psycho dressbreak, I went up to the Herald Square Macy's bridal dept and left having ordered an Alfred Sung bridesmaid's dress in ivory. They told me it could take up to 16 weeks to come in, which would be sometime around 2 weeks before the wedding. I regretted it the moment I walked out of the store. Dress count: 5.
Let me just say that I am not proud of any of this, but I couldn't stop myself. I just bounced from store to store, never feeling comfortable, never feeling pretty, never feeling right. Granted, I still hadn't spent anywhere near what an average wedding dress costs, but the mental toll was pretty high. I was never going to be happy. I had worried about this from the very beginning — how could I ever be happy if I hate the way I look every day, never mind on a day where everyone is going to look at me and then take pictures!
I was starting to think the only way to solve this problem was to get a dress custom made. I would have gone that way weeks earlier, but I couldn't figure out how to go about it. The few places I read about online or in magazines were way too expensive and I was too paranoid to take random opinions from internet message boards full of crazy brides-to-be (who I felt I was nothing like, conveniently ignoring the mountain of dresses piling up in my closet. Welcome to Hypocrite Junction, population: me.)
I'd been spending a lot of time on etsy.com, looking at jewelry and gift ideas and eventually I stumbled across their Alchemy feature. Briefly, Alchemy allows buyers to post requests for custom items and sellers bid on the chance to make the item. For the buyer, it costs nothing to use the service beyond the ultimate cost of the item. You see where I'm going here. I had a ton of bookmarked dress pics that were all nearly perfect but either too small, too expensive, not available in any shade of white. I gathered the two closest and at the last minute grabbed a pretty picture off someone else's Alchemy bid and submitted my request. By the end of the day I had a dozen responses and by the end of the week I made a choice. My custom dress was underway. Dress count: 6.
While the dress count stopped there, the decision was still yet to be made. Coming up: Carrie Bradshaw steals my thunder, the wonder of petticoats and a last minute contender.
Posted by beth at June 30, 2008 04:24 PM
