Weddingbee Blog

After a couple weeks of cooling down from these rather nightmarish dress-hunting experiences, I came to a decision. Mama Ticket should buy the bright red dress. She loved it, she would be comfortable in it, everyone knows she’s my mom, and most importantly I really didn’t want to argue with her anymore. I had expected dress shopping with her to be fun and exciting, and it turned into constant bickering and exhaustion.

From my perspective, Mama Ticket was in no way willing to budge. She was basically saying that her desires were more important than mine and that I was a terrible daughter for suggesting that I was unhappy with her choices (funny how we hear things differently than how people really say them). Her criteria for a dress were as follows:

1. Under $250. (That’s totally fair.)

2. Not low-cut. (Obviously not a problem, though Mama Ticket’s version of low-cut is a tad different than most people’s.)

I thought something between J Lo’s belly button and a turtleneck would be ideal.

Image via Lily Boutique

Image via Brown Girl Gumbo / Dress by Jones New York

However, Mama Ticket still found these dresses to be too low for her liking.

Image via Dressity

3. Absolutely no strapless. (OK, understandable.)

4. No one-shoulder. (OK, fine.)

5. MUST have sleeves or a matching jacket that has sleeves. (All right…)

6. Needs to have a flowy skirt—nothing too fitted. (Sure.)

7. Needs to come in her size. (Well, obviously…)

8. She must feel comfortable in the dress. (I would say that’s a fair criteria to have; no one wants to be miserable all night.)

With all this in mind, we headed BACK to David’s Bridal in search of the bright red apple dress.

When I arrived, Mama Ticket had already picked out a couple of dresses she liked and was headed for the dressing room. When it became clear we would need different sizes, I headed back for the rack. Before I left, Mama Ticket mentioned a beautiful dress she had seen up front and asked me to look for it. When I reached the dresses in question, I found a super-purple dress and a wine colored dress. I assumed she meant the wine colored dress, as it was somewhat similar to other dresses she liked and the color almost looked…dare I say it?! Burgundy! OK, it was not really burgundy, but dang—it was closer than bright red apple. A glimmer of hope rose up inside of me.

I brought her back the dress along with the new sizes, and she took it with surprise commenting on how pretty it was, though it was not in fact the dress she had been referring to. (Apparently she really liked the SUPER-purple one…oh, Mama Ticket. *sigh*) We both fell for this new dress. It was a little bit small, but we decided we could just order it one size up. I felt like we had found a compromise! It wasn’t a true burgundy, but she would still coordinate just fine! I was getting super excited as it appeared the dress drama was nearly over. We walked up to the front of the store to order it, and they told us…they couldn’t order it in her size. The largest size they sold was one size smaller than she was (just BARELY). But she didn’t want to feel like she HAD to lose weight to fit into her dress (which I completely support as that would be WAY to stressful), so it was back to the drawing board.

She could always get the dress she wore to Sister Ticket’s wedding except in wine; that way she knew she would be comfortable and it would still be closer to the right color. (I secretly still liked the small dress better, darn it all.) I went along with this plan till we found that they don’t carry the coverall she likes in wine. They only carry a shrug that has a three-quarter sleeve with a frilly neck in wine (it would still match the dress perfectly), but she didn’t really like the frilly neck so she shot that down.

The offending frilly jacket:

Image via David’s Bridal

Bees…at this point I was on the verge of tears. I felt like I had caved and given in all I could. I had gone shopping with her for HOURS of constant bickering, and I was just so very tired. We were on the verge of getting something we could both have admitted compromise for—the dress met seven out of eight of her criteria if you consider a frilly neck to be uncomfortable. I told her to get whatever she wanted. I didn’t say this out of bitterness or anger. I genuinely meant it. I could not spend one more minute in that store arguing with her. I needed her to pick a dress and for me to have absolutely nothing to do with it. After telling her this, I could see tears welling up in HER eyes. My goodness, we are quite the pair. So dramatic over such a silly, overindulgent problem…the color of a dress! Of all the things to shed tears over. I reassured her that I was OK with whatever she picked but I had to get back to work, and with that I left.

Later that night when I got home I asked Mama Ticket what she ended up ordering. And the dress Mama Ticket chose…

The dress and coverall she wore to Sister Ticket’s wedding in apple.

Images via David’s Bridal: Dress / Coverall

Upon hearing the news, I must admit against all my better judgment I was still upset. Apparently I had secretly hoped she would change her mind and choose the dress I wanted (the very same dress in wine), but alas she had not. In an attempt to make her decision seem more pleasing to me, she attempted to go into a long explanation about how she would fix a shiny portion of the dress. (She was confused, thinking I disliked the satin on the dress, when in fact I had no problem at all with the satin. It was the COLOR of the entire dress I was displeased with.) And, well…I reacted with a response akin to something a 13-year-old going through puberty might say: “I don’t care, Mom. That’s fine.”

I know what you are thinking! What a *itch! How dare she?! She told Mama Ticket to pick whatever she wanted, and here she is having a hissy fit over what she picked! Uncool! Yes. I know. It was an epic-fail moment for me. Hopefully my last major meltdown in response to wedding-related drama. I assure you I am NOT proud of my behavior. I tried to make up for it later, but in the end I’m afraid this will be something of a miserable memory for all parties involved.

Well, I’m relieved to say this portion of planning is over. Did you have any moments of wedding planning that you expected to be really fun and turned out to be a total nightmare? I doubt any of you turned into a raging *itch over something as trivial as a dress color. I would like to point out that now after some time has passed I’m perfectly happy with Mama Ticket’s dress. I think it took stepping back from the issue for a while to see just how trivial it really was.