The Wedding Dress

I always envisioned buying my wedding dress with my mom and all my friends around, trying a million dresses on, taking hours until finally finding the perfect dress but then again, when do things really work out the way you expect them to?
In St. George there are only really three wedding dress shops. One afternoon I went with two of my roommates just for a preview day of dress shopping. My real plans were to go up to Provo with all of my bridesmaids when my mom and Hannah came out for my shower but I wanted to feel more like a bride with planning my wedding and all so I went ahead just for a gander. We went into the first store, not the best experience. There were no customers and the store was still open for a couple of hours yet the people in the store still complained about me coming in without an appointment. I could understand if they were busy but come on! Not a single customer in the store except for my roommates and me! They finally agreed to let us look at dresses quickly and what did I find? A whole lot of nothing! I could tell just by looking on the rack that I didn’t like anything I saw but my lovely roommates were determined to stay in the store until I at least tried one on. So I did, gross! Now I was tired, frustrated at the lack of choices and the indifferent sales people AND I felt like the Michelin man in the ugly dress. I couldn’t leave that store fast enough. On to store #2. We walked into the second store to find a smaller store but nicer people and more options. Sounds good to me! I was trash talking the first store in front of a sales person while pulling dresses to try, only to find out that, store #1 owns store #2! Haha… way to open my big mouth! Seriously though, who knew?
I learned something about my taste in dresses that day, it is completely different than that of my two roommates. I tried on a dress and loved it! I walked out and, well, didn’t get the reaction I would have hoped for. To them it was “all right”. Woohoo! That’s just what you want to hear when trying on what could possibly be your future wedding dress. Of course they found a dress that was “just perfect”, for them maybe. I like simple-simple which to them means BORING… There it was, they picked out a snowflake of a dress, beads all over, frilly this and frilly that. A huge beaded something right on the hip. I hated it the second I saw it but I tried it on just to please them. They loved it of course. Unfortunately none of the dresses were “the one” and none were in my price range so I left that day empty handed and without having made any progress in even deciding what type of dress to look for in the future. After that whole experience I was pretty sure I didn’t even want a wedding dress. Having new frustration towards the color white and tulle and more self-confidence issues than ever before, I would be wearing something different to my wedding. This was my attitude at least after that shopping day. There was one more dress shop that we hadn’t had time to stop by that day. I didn’t really care, to be honest, because I didn’t have the desire to go again and relive that wonderful experience I had with dress shopping before. However, I was off of work on Columbus Day and Chad suggested I go look just to get excited again. I went by myself just to take a little look. Just an errand among many for the day but I did stop by. I didn’t have an appointment so I didn’t know what to expect but to my surprise I was greeted right away and they actually welcomed by business, imagine that! I went to the racks and found many dresses to choose from. I hadn’t planned on shopping and trying on dresses by myself but they were so nice and helpful I decided to give it a go. I started out with five to try on and guess what… number three was the one! I tried others just to make sure but I kept going back to that third dress. So in thirty minutes and by myself with the help of the sales people I was able to find the dress I loved, I didn’t feel like a marshmallow and it was very reasonably priced! It didn’t work out the way I had always imagined but it ended perfectly!