Weddingbee Blog

Let’s pick up where we last left off in my dress adventure.

I thought I had found a wonderful dress, but then I decided to take another spin around the showroom, just in case…

And then, I saw it. I saw my dress. I saw rainbows, dinosaurs, unicorns, kittens, butterflies, swirling-whirling mists, angels, Lisa Frank stickers—everything. It was magic. I scooped the dress up and ran back to the dressing area. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod-how-did-I-miss-this-dress?!”

Marta took me back into the fitting room, and strategically clamped me into the dress. The only sample they had in the store was a size 2, and that was not a “vanity size”. Even with the dress attached to my body with industrial clamps, I was instantly in love. I came out of the dressing room, swirled in circles, and just knew. My mother beamed at me, and before I could open my mouth, she blurted out, “Oh Scissors, it’s perfect. You have to get this. I adore it. Do you adore it? I adore it. It looks like you adore it. It’s beautiful, perfect, and just screams YOU.”

I’m sure I squealed something, but honestly, at that point, I had a happiness blackout.

This, the Maribel by Christos, is my dress.

It was sent down from dress heaven to let me swirl and twirl around in it on our wedding day. It was made for me to cut a rug in it.

There was a “We’ll take it” somewhere in there, and then we got down to brass tacks.

My little slice of dress heaven would be mine, but not without a few hoops to jump through. I was too tall for the dress. None of the sizes that the dress was made in would be long enough to fit my frame—both in length of skirt and length of torso. Christos would have to make a pattern from scratch based on my measurements. Suddenly, the price of my little miracle nearly doubled, and I thought I was going to faint. This was just about going to double the original cost of the Maribel.

As I prepared myself to hang up the towel, I looked up to see that my mother was writing a check. I instantly felt extremely guilty, and almost told her that it was too much.

Almost. The guilty feeling was suppressed by feelings of ridiculous joy and amazement, and I’m not sure how many times I blubbered out “Are you serious?” and “THANK YOU.” (To be perfectly honest, I’m still in total disbelief that I have such a dreamboat of a dress.)

The remainder of the story blurs up again, and really probably isn’t that interesting. There was copious measuring, including a re-measure because the store owner did not believe that my legs were as long as they were, and after about an hour and a half in one dress store, I left with a folder of information, a sixpence for my shoe, and the biggest damned grin plastered on my face.

We canceled the rest of the dress appointments, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I became a one pump chump with regards to dress shopping. The girl too terrified to even think about dress shopping ended up with a wonderful dress after only one trip to one store. No rocks, torches, or ogre-esque remarks.

See? There’s hope for my fellow terrified ladies. Maybe you’ll only have to brave one store in order to end up with your beautiful gown, rainbows and kittens included.

Who else found and decided on their dress right away? Did any one else have to go the crazy-custom route because of height or other reasons?