On my way to the boutique for the first try-on, I was getting anxious. I had worked hard to lose 12 pounds and obviously wanted people to notice it! When I put the dress on, I looked like a scaly whale or an oompa loompa on the downswing of singing Dippity Do! You know, the point where they are their shortest, bobbing up and down to the beat of the music. For a good laugh, check out the pic below. And yes, after I looked at it once, I couldn't look at it again, I closed my eyes shut.....tightly!
If you could have seen the look on my Mom's face when I walked out of the dressing room in that dress! Despite the fact that I looked like I had gained 45 pounds, all she could talk about was covering up my cleavage which was the only thing that DID look good in my mind! I left the shop shaking my head wondering how in the world could the seamstress and the shop owner tell me I looked good in that dress? Because they sold it to me, that's how! My Mom kept right on trying to convince me "It didn't look that bad" she said and "I wish I had paid more attention to the dress you ordered. I could have told you those pleats would make you look big"! I said, "Mom, you are not helping and I am not wearing that dress. I refuse to pay $!X%#@ for a wedding and arrive at it looking like a hog ready for slaughter!" Anyway, I went to Macy's that same afternoon and found the dress I wore to Sydnee and Trey's wedding. I was very happy with it. I looked the way I had imagined and we took it home. Feast your eyes on this one!
Quite the difference! Now there was only one other thing wrong. The overlay of the dress was so sheer that my Mom's sewing machine would not hem it without pulling the material. I took it to the cleaners in Chatsworth to see if they could hem it and he said he couldn't do it, material too sheer. I asked if he knew who could and he said "Not in this town". So, I decided to just cut off the dress and not hem it and pray it wouldn't ravel. I took the attitude of "If anybody notices it's not hemmed, they shouldn't be looking that closely". It did ravel a bit and Can you believe I had two people that day tell me my dress was coming unhemmed? One woman and yes, one man! Unbelievable. The bride was gorgeous, the weather was beautiful, the band was amazing, the food was great, and so on but they were interested in my dress hem!
The moral of this story is (1) Never, ever buy a dress from a catalog that you haven't tried on, (2) People will notice if your dress is not hemmed and (3) the Mother of the Bride (MOB) has to look skinny no matter what!
Unraveled and hemmed in,
Tammy
The Happy Handicap
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