Always a bridesmaid

My wedding dress. The bridesmaids wore eyelet.So last Sunday after church I asked bride-to-be Erica how she was coming along on the selection of a dress to be worn by her three bridesmaids.

She, afflicted with bride-brain, mumbled something indeterminate in reply.

It's time to make it your priority, I said. So that in the event something goes wrong, there will be time to correct it.

(The wedding is taking place sixteen weeks from tomorrow whether she/I/we is/am/are ready or not.)

The future Mrs. Chad Porter nodded in agreement but looked a trifle forlorn.

She's overwhelmed. I get it.

Naturally I decided to help out.

To accurately tell you the number of web sites I combed -- not to mention the number of dresses I zoomed in on and the number of links I copied and pasted into emails to Erica, and the staggering number of hours it all took, this search for the dress -- would be like trying to come up with how many times in my life I have watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

The answer is: many. Many many. Use your imagination.

Enough that my knowledge on both subjects is near-encyclopedic.

To sum it up: If you want to find a bridesmaid dress that is the right color, the right price, features enough non-see-through fabric to cover a female who will be on display in the front of a church, and is available in triplicate in the sizes you need?

Well. You may as well set out to herd every squirrel within a ten-mile radius into your living room and make them all sit still for a showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

While wearing little pirate costumes. The squirrels, I mean.

For extra points, teach them to recite the best quotes. Like: She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised. So we're all men of our word really ... except for, of course, Elizabeth, who is, in fact, a woman.

 Give up? Parlay.

Take that first part: Color. A particular shade of pink. As it turns out, a wee bit too particular. Like, you'll sooner encounter liveried valet parking at the door of your local Walmart than to unearth the dress in that color.

I do believe choirs of airborne swine would have been spotted in the cerulean skies over Columbia, singing I Love You Truly in four-part harmony, before that happened.

Take that second part: Right Price.

It's simple; easy to remember: We want a dress that looks expensive, but isn't, and/or at one point actually was expensive, but now is not. As in, name-brand (preferably designer) quality, but costing several miles south of a C-note.

Ah yes. Eternal denizens of The Bad Place want an ice cold Slurpee from the corner 7-Eleven, too.

There are scads of dresses out there ... you say. But finish the sentence: ... that are just the right color and are modest and available in all the sizes and only cost four hundred dollars.

Precisely. Four hundred dollars. Why not make it a million.

And now for that third part: Modest.

Oh dear. Somewhere, at some time, for a reason no one now knows, someone decided that bridesmaids must dress like a cross between a nineteenth-century debutante and a tart on a street corner.

I'd be scrolling down a web site, blushing, cross-eyed from scrutinizing hundreds of gowns. I'd see one (in any shade of pink subtler than bubble gum), and I'd stop. The front would look as though it could possibly, in the right light, provide enough bodice-type coverage that I'd venture my cursor over the picture.

Boom!

The little internet mannequin would whip around, revealing that the gown had no back.

If it had a back, it didn't have a front. Or much of one.

If it had a top, it didn't have a bottom.

If it had a bottom ... you get the idea.

I mean, the wenches bridesmaids in question aren't nuns but they're not pole dancers either.

And so it would go. Whole dresses -- in the right color, at the right price, feminine but with the floozy factor dialed decidedly down -- were scarce as flip flops at the North Pole. 

But still I scrolled. Still I sent links to Erica, who also stayed up an entire night, scrolling.

I'd sleep, exhausted, and wake to brew coffee and begin scrolling again.

One night -- late -- I was scrolling on yet another fancy department store web site. YES we had considered all the cheap dresses on Amazon, that come from China and have skirts ten feet long and are put together with glue.

You may have ours and yours too. We may be cheap but we're not about to look cheap. And make of this what you will, but we don't want the girls to exactly look like standard-issue bridesmaids, either.

We want to put our own spin on it. Because we are ornery style makers.

In due time I began to feel the beginnings of a low-grade panic. I quelled it by reasoning that not yet in the history of the world (I don't think) has a bridesmaid walked down the aisle at a wedding naked as a jaybird.

And while I wasn't yet technically desperate, I was ready for us to find the dress. And to know we'd found it, so that we could move on to other aspects of planning the wedding.

That's when I found it. Yes. Me! I found it. I am so happy and honored to have been the one to find it.

I scrolled. I saw. I held my breath. I examined in detail. I stared in disbelief. I dared not blink lest it disappear. I clicked on available sizes. I copied the link. I sent it to Erica and to Audrey, who will actually be wearing it (the dress; not the link).

For good measure I texted both girls with news of an impending bridesmaid-dress-related email entitled I THINK THIS IS IT.

And it was. 

The crossing wasn't entirely smooth; Erica did not like the dress at first. It wasn't what she'd envisioned. I didn't push. Much. Twenty-four hours later, the bride saw the light.

The dress is gorgeous. It was an expensive dress, marked to half price, with additional discounts waiting to be applied. And free shipping.

We found the shoes to go with it on the same web site. Not cheap shoes; good shoes. Beautiful shoes, that enhance the beauty of the modest, well-made dress that is in just about the right color.

(To be accurate, the frock is more than one color. But it is the idea of the color that Erica wanted.)

You'll see.

Within an hour, all three girls had purchased their dress and their shoes to go with it, at truly incredible discounts.

Total for each ensemble: One hundred fifteen dollars. Just add earrings.

Fingers crossed that the dresses fit, and that if they don't, the replacement size will be available. We are not out of the woods yet.

But we are at the tree line, breaking into a clearing.

As the pirate said: We're catching up.

Apropos of nothing (except that for some reason, writing this post made me think of it), I leave you with a clip from The Awful Truth (1937) starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Thursday

Comments

[Barb]

I've not visited in so long. I've missed you! It 's been a busy winter here, too, and I'm not even looking for appropriate gowns. The chosen one is lovely, and I sure hope by now all are fitted and the young women don't gain a pound in 16 weeks (less now...) Hope you are all well. Barb

[Jennifer]

@Barb ... I've missed you too! So wonderful it is to hear from you. Yes the gowns are PERFECT and we are so thrilled. I however, have bought two dresses online and had to return them both. I'm going physically shopping (in a brick-and-mortar store) in mid-April, where I will try things on until we hit upon "the one." Please assure me that will not be a difficult task, haaahaa. xoxo