It's wedding season once again! I now have two more "Mrs." to add to the lists. It's exciting to update the phonebook with new last names and addresses. All this wedding mumbo jumbo makes me go back to my wedding planning days. Plus our anniversary is coming up rather quickly. One fun story, although I probably wrote about it while it was happening.

One of my friends was telling me about her wedding dress and how she bought "off the rack". Me being the snooty pa-tooty that I was, I would never have considered buying off the rack for my wedding gown! And then I started looking and couldn't really find anything my style. I wanted to have the perfect dress that was different than everyone elses. Eventually I find it. The perfect dress... Almost. It was discontinued, was on sale, and had been a model dress at the boutique I was at. It was the last one with no order option. It was a couple sizes too big but no terrible. The seamstress told me agild could do all the alterations, no problem. So, I bought off the rack and was so happy. Plus I got an amazing dress on sale! It was beautiful. Lots of intricate bead work all over, lace alone the edges, beautiful lace straps that were just thick enough but just thin enough, a gorgeous train. I was ecstatic.

Fast forward six months. I'm home from college on spring break and we go in for the alteration appointment. The seamstress starts pinning and picking when she suddenly stops. Basically, she couldn't alter the dress without ruining it. We had asked if that would be a problem when we bought it but were assured it would be fine. This boutique does not accept returns or exchanges. There I stood wearing a beautiful gown... That was far to large and too long for my wedding. What could I do? I pulled the curtain over the dressing room entrance (after telling the seamstress and the store owner that they ruined my wedding) and sobbed. I'm pretty sure everyone in the store could hear me. I looked at the mirror and realized how horrible the dress was and imagined how terrible my wedding was going to be. Eventually the store owner said we could exchange the dress since the mistake was theirs, but there wouldn't be enough time to order a dress in my size before the wedding. Again, I was distraugt. My mom, maid of honor, and I hopelessly plucked through the hundreds of gowns. Nothing was in my size and the only dresses I thought were decent were like the original dress, too difficult to alter. I was beginning to despair. I tried on a few dresses and ended up getting one altered for the wedding. I still sulked around for a while afterwards since the dress was not what I had wanted. It was pretty but it was just like everyone elses dress. White, strapleas, and beaded. It was elegant and it was beautiful, but it was not what I had been envisioning. It was one of the smaller dresses in the store and was plain enough on the sides that the seamstress could bring it in enough to fit. It was better than swimming in a size 6 that was about a foot too long for me, even with my 4 inch heels.

So I ended up buying off the rack and having the token straplass wedding dress. But when it came down to it, I really loved my dress! It was elegant and classic. It fit our theme beautifully. The beads were stitched on well and weren't all glitz and glam like so many cheap dresses. And while this dress was off the rack, it certainly was not cheap. Everything turned out better than ok. And I had been too proud to think the situation could ever be righted. Besides, what happens to a wedding dress the day after the wedding? It's throw back into the bag and put away in a closet. So much fuss over one day. It's amazing. And in the end, no matter what you're wearing, you still are married. Such a fuss.

That was my one bridezilla moment. My wedding dress meltdown. Other than that, everything went more than perfectly. And in two weeks from tomorrow I will have been happily married for 1 year.