When I walked into a bridal store for the first time in my life I honestly felt like I was going into battle. In my head I was vaguely humming that Eminem song "nervous but on the surface calm and ready". I felt sick and the feeling I was about to vomit had been building over the last few days and was now at a fever pitch.
I have spent the last few months buying every wedding magazine, obsessively watching Say Yes to the Dress, Don't Tell The Bride (incidentally a terrifying program), Say Yes To The Dress Atlanta and any other vaguely wedding themed show in preparation for my first bridal appointment. You may think then that it's my fault for being so nervous and scared but you see it's theirs! The bridal shop people. For starters, when I called back in October LAST YEAR to make the appointment they laughed derisively and said I'd left it a bit last minute (I'm getting married December this year) and so I would need to wait for 5-6 months for an appointment. Straight away I was panicked and feeling like I was off track and would never get a dress and everything would be AWFUL and fall apart.
I did get one though. For March. So on I blithely trotted watching my wedding shows, reading my magazines and picturing in my head the ideal dress until March came around.
During that time I had probably everyone I knew or met asking me 'Have you picked the dress yet?', 'Any luck with the dress?'. Any time I said no the married women would give me a pitying nod as if to say 'poor thing' and the men would launch into a tirade about how traumatic the experience had been for their wives. I should have known there but the wedding shows had lulled me into a little lovely safe wedding blanket.
If you haven't seen Say Yes To The Dress (New York or Atlanta) then this is the usual shtick: the bride sits in the beautiful foyer of the store with an entourage of caring, encouraging but maybe slightly overly opinionated family and friends. Their consultant who has been already assigned to them comes out, greets them and takes them through to a really beautiful fitting room to talk about their favourite styles of dress, the style of wedding and of course the all important fiance. The girls then give their consultant words to work from: vintage, lacy, princess-y, ball-gown, flowy. Their wedding might be taking place in 4 weeks in their parents backyard, in 6 months in a hotel in Manhattan and sometimes people come in not even engaged and annoyingly get engaged on screen and are *gasp* so surprised! The consultant will then pull 4-5 dresses. They'll try them on, their family will gasp and nod and cry and they have a brilliant little gay stylist guy who they bring out for advice and then when they're nearing the big decision they "hype" the bride up by putting the veil on her and giving her a little bouquet and standing her on a pedestal whilst everyone cry s and she cry s and the gay guy cry s and everyone screams "I'm saying yes to the dress!" and its all amazing and perfect and annoying. Now don't think me cynical. At the time I was wrapped up in it and believed this was true. This was the experience I am going to get I stupidly thought. WRONG.
On the day of my appointment (I had two appointments at the two best stores in my area, back to back) I walked into the bridal store with just myself and my mum and a $5000 budget pre-alterations. I was already a bit upset I already was missing an entourage. I live in Australia and my Aunts, grandmothers, friends and bridesmaids are thousands of miles away in Scotland so already I was an entourage down.
It is hard for me here to describe to you how awful the first dress shop was immediately. I had spent weeks researching it and this was the mecca of bridal stores in my area. If your dress wasn't here it didn't exist basically. They had everything I was told.
First off was the sign on the door. 'Due to copyright laws we ask you not take any photo's or videos. No iPhones, no laptops, no DSLR's, no camera's, no Skyping.' I was upset straight away as I knew I wanted and needed photo's to show my family back home. My mum was appalled and didn't want to go in on that basis.
I walked in and in lieu of some chirpy little assistant the smell greeted me. It honest to God smelled like a charity shop. I understand that the dresses are well worn and maybe a bit sweaty under the pits but dry clean them! Open a window...light a candle! God! It smelled damp and sweaty and the lighting was dingy and dark.
I then met my consultant who looked to be the only one in the store over the age of 18 who then told me she didn't have the dress I wanted to try on and had looked at obsessively and wanted to try on first and I was to chose another 4 or 5 gowns to try on and left us to it. We looked around for about 20 minutes and really really struggled to chose even one dress to try on. They were cheap looking, bad quality and dirty. Like, really dirty. I eventually chose 3 and went into the dressing room with this woman where I was unceremoniously stripped to my knickers, bra off just standing there talking about the shade of my bridesmaid dresses with this strange woman and her ugly dresses.
I had sort of hoped in my heart of hearts I'd try on my first dress and there would be tears and fireworks and we'd buy it and it would be great buy it wasn't. I was heaved in and out of dresses for the next 45 minutes until I was hot, sweaty and fed up. I tried to describe to my consultant how I liked a certain part of a dress but not the bottom half say and she'd bring out all these materials and try and construct a frankenstein of a dress on me that was basically just a poor version of the dress I'd seen that they didn't stock. I felt dejected and annoyed and panicky. I felt that sick feeling again but for a different reason. How was I going to find a dress? Was there even a dress out there for me? I felt like she wanted me to just settle. 'Some people don't have that wow moment' she kept saying 'For some people it's just a bit calmer and the wow comes from different things - like seeing your new husband on the day'. But I wanted to be wowed! I wanted to scream. I know what my husband will look like, I've met him already! I wanted to say 'Yes!' to the dress! Nothing I saw here excited me beyond 'hm....yeah thats....okay..' My mum saw I'd had enough and wrapped up the appointment and we left.
When we got outside we both spun into a panic. What were we going to do? If that's the best in the city we'll need to go elsewhere. Where do we go? Where could I try on the dress I loved?
We had time between this disaster and our next appointment so went for lunch to debrief. On the way I called the second store we had an appointment at and asked if they stocked the dress I like. They did. Right then I knew it was going to be okay and this place would be better. I'd find my dress here.
When we got to the next store they had the same sign on the door - no cameras, phones, skyping etc etc but the atmosphere inside the next shop was night and day compared to the last one. There was nice music on, the lighting was bright and beautiful. All the dresses I could see were gorgeous, even the ones that weren't my taste. All their materials were so much better. She again told me to chose a few dresses I liked. She had already taken my favourite dress off the rack and when she pulled that out I just wanted to try it on. It was beautiful and perfect. I chose another few dresses regardless and went into the dressing room.
My consultant then made me try on the other gowns before trying on my favourite. I had told her about my bad experience that morning and I think she wanted me to enjoy this. She also probably knew better than I did that when I tried that dress on it would be a done deal and once I had that on wouldn't try anything else.
Each dress I tried on was lovely. I loved different things about them but they just weren't perfect. Then came the dress. The material was luxurious and smooth as it slipped on. I felt it straight away. I knew this was the dress. I chose not to say anything until I'd seen my "entourage's" reaction. When I walked out my mum looked stunned right away and it was then I finally got my moment. I said Yes! to my dress.
I also said yes to a rather gorgeous veil and obscenely expensive belt to finish off the dress.
I think it's very hard for brides these days. There are a lot of pressures from these bridal TV shows and magazines for everything to be just right. We probably do have higher expectations than previous generations of brides but to that I say 'why not?'. We have this one day for everything to be perfect, for all eyes to be on us and in striving for greatness I don't see why we should settle for anything less than the best.
PS - when you eventually do chose the dress and pay for the thing they do let you take photos, it's nothing to do with copyright laws they just dont want you getting it cheaper anywhere else. For this reason they also change the names of the dresses the designer gives them so a Vera Wang 'Plum' dress might become 'Josephine' in the stores dialogue.
AK.
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