How I Planned Your Wedding (5 page)

M
y quest for the dress began with a mistake. Dark forces were at work, inexplicably drawing me to the swankiest bridal salon in Seattle, a place that would eventually prove to be more toxic than the set of VH1’s
Rock of Love.
(For the uninitiated, that’s one of the finest reality shows on television, in which a troupe of strippers with balloons for breasts compete for the lust of aging rock musician Bret Michaels.)

In fiction, such places are guarded by rabid, three-headed dogs, but at the Swank Salon (names changed to protect the bitchy), Cerberus had been replaced by a burbling replica of the Trevi Fountain.

My mom, my future bridesmaid, Molly, and I skipped happily through the flower-and crystal-encrusted door into a hippodrome-sized, airy room filled with every beautiful wedding gown I ever imagined. I’d never given much thought to the infinite possible shades of white, but here I was, jaw on the floor, confronted by the whole pale spectrum gleaming in satin and silk, lace and lamé. The shop was designed in the round, with layers of dresses lining the outer walls of the space like a cupcake wrapper, tasteful doors with hand-painted French signs tucked away behind the racks. Each door was unique, and promised a cozy and beautiful nook for trying on the dress of my dreams.

But the center of the store was what really made me need the crash cart.

There, raised about three feet off the chic navy-blue carpet, was a glowing Lucite runway. Plush ivory chairs sat at either end of the runway, understated yet unspeakably elegant, with crystal champagne glasses on low tables and bottles of Dom Perignon chilling in monogrammed ice buckets. A discreet video camera was set up at the far end and live images of the empty runway appeared on flat-screen televisions throughout the shop. French music from the movie
Amélie
filled the air, just soft enough to add to the ambience without interrupting the rustle of chiffon and tulle.

I felt a string of drool dribble from my lower lip and plop on the old tank top I wore.

“We’ll give you a DVD of all the dresses you try on, so you can show anyone in your life who’s not here today,” cooed voice behind me, dripping with sweetness.

I turned around and stared down at the waif of a salesgirl who had materialized behind me like a silent-but-deadly fart.

“I’m Brigitte,” she said.

Her black hair was meticulously teased into an edgy, bouffant-style ponytail. Her eyes were expertly rimmed in kohl black eyeliner, adding drama to her pale, elfin face and petal-pink cheeks. She smiled at me, revealing a row of perfect teeth that were whiter than any of the dresses she peddled. She wore black skinny jeans and a beige cashmere sweater that wrapped luxuriously around her small form as though it had been made for her. When she moved, a collection of chic bangles on her wrists made a soft clanging noise, calling attention to her perfectly manicured, purple-black fingernails. She probably weighed about the same as one of my calves.

In short, she was a bride’s worst nightmare. She pretty much looked like a model, except she wasn’t tall so I couldn’t convince myself that she was one of those girls who’s too tall to love (I get judgmental when I’m feeling intimidated). I quickly realized that I would be trying on my dresses in front of her, which didn’t bode well for my self-esteem. Standing next to her, I felt like the off spring of a cow and an
ogre. The cellulite on the backs of my thighs tingled a warning signal at me, as if to say, “Get out while you still have your dignity!”

But I didn’t listen. The siren call of the runway in the center of the enormous shop was too much for me. I sucked in my gut, plastered a confident-ish smile on my face and introduced myself.

She looked me slowly up and down, one delicate hand twirling a silky strand of dark hair. She frowned slightly, her impeccably waxed eyebrows coming together in an expression of thoughtful confusion. I could practically hear what she was thinking: What could possibly disguise those flabby arms without accentuating her pear-shaped hips? (This was before I had gotten in shape for the wedding, after all. But still.)

“What do
you
think would look best on you?” she asked me. The emphasis on
you
made it seem like she very much doubted my fashion sense. I mean, I was wearing old yoga pants and a shirt with a built-in bra, but isn’t that what most gals would wear when planning to spend an entire day trying on dresses?

I’m just glad I’d been planning my wedding gown from the moment I popped out of the womb, because I had a firm answer for her: “I want the biggest ball gown you’ve got. Strapless.”

She smiled, her glossy lips turning up even as her eyes lingered on my upper arms as if to remind me that a strapless gown would do nothing to hide the lard-filled wings that flopped from my biceps whenever I moved.

I reminded myself that from her point of view, in which Kate Moss represented the ideal body type, my slightly undefined triceps muscles would appear offensively large. And, yes, I did need to do more dips at the gym. But I was a former college athlete, and I knew how to get myself toned. Sure, I could stand to lose ten pounds or so, but I tried to remember that I wasn’t as grossly obese as her expression implied. A strapless gown would look lovely on me. I might just need to live on celery and water for a month before the wedding.

I smiled back. “Yep,” I said. “A strapless ball gown.”

“Great!” she chirped. “And what budget are we working with?”

As she asked, she began to usher my mom, Molly and me to a corner of the store where I could see deliciously poofy-looking skirts dangling beneath delicate-boned bodices.

“Uh…I was thinking maybe around a thousand bucks? I guess I could go up to fifteen hundred if it was perfect enough. Does that sound about right to you, Mommy?” I looked at my mom and Molly, hoping that I hadn’t just named an offensively outrageous sum of money.

“Or
less,
” my mom stated, seemingly unfazed by this evil bird of a woman.

The heroin-chic salesgirl stopped in her tracks. I could practically hear the soles of her patent-leather ballet flats screech on the floor. With a poisonous look in her eyes, she rounded on me.

“I’m not sure if you know how much a
high-fashion dress
costs in an upscale shop like ours, but you
really
need to reconsider how much you’re willing to spend on the
most important gown you’ll ever wear.
” The bangles on her wrists jangled as she stabbed her tiny hands through the air to emphasize her point.

Suddenly, she looked down and stopped midsnarl. I saw her eyes light on my mom’s robin’s egg blue Christian Louboutin pumps (bought for 90 percent off their usual $900 price tag at Nordstrom Rack). The sight of high-end shoes seemed to calm her.

“I mean,” she tittered, taking on the tone of a concerned friend, “you wouldn’t want to pass up the gown of your dreams just because you’re letting a
silly little thing
like budget get in the way, would you?”

“I…I…” I stammered.

I think I was suffering from temporary insanity due to couture vapors, because if I were treated this way in any other circumstance, I would have flashed her my pleasantly plump middle finger and gone out for a burger. But here, in this tulle-draped shop that looked as though it had been spun from my little-girl wedding dreams, I was speechless.

Brigitte saw my moment of weakness and knew she had me. All she had to do was get past my last line of wedding defense—my mom.

She looked down at my mom’s shoes as if to gather strength from
their signature red soles, then tried a new tactic: “Mrs. Wiggs, I can see by your ensemble that you’re a woman who knows fashion. You must see how
tragic
it would be for your daughter to wear a less-than-perfect gown on the day of her wedding.”

My mom, in an uncharacteristic moment of gullibility, seemed to waver. I’m guessing this resulted from the cloying scent of gardenias wafting through the air from the multitude of floral arrangements adorning the shop.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose we could look at a couple of
slightly
more expensive gowns…but nothing over two thousand. I’d be shocked if we can’t find something beautiful for such a price.”

The words
more expensive
seemed to bring Brigitte back to life. Invoking a salesgirl’s selective deafness, she ignored the
slightly
part of my mom’s response and promptly took us on a whirlwind tour of tulle-and-satin heaven. She seemed to float around the shop, hoisting piles of gowns that must have weighed more than she did and transporting them to a dressing room that resembled Marie Antoinette’s boudoir.

She ordered me to strip down to my grundies (that’s grandma-undies, to those of you who are still convinced that G-strings are comfortable). It only took me a minute (and a glass of Dom Perignon) to forget my jiggly abs and flabby butt as dress after beautiful dress slipped over my head, each more stunning than the last. Brigitte’s fingers flew, fastening rows of minuscule hook-and-eye button closures with machine-like speed; she was able to fill my mom’s and Molly’s champagne flutes with little more than a threatening glance. Finally, when I thought I had been through every ball gown the store had to offer, Brigitte opened the door to my dressing room. “I saved the best for last,” she breathed, a glint in her eye.

With the wily skill of a crack dealer, she produced a breathtaking whisper of couture for me, reverently placing the cloudlike garment on a gilded hook on the wall. She whisked aside my privacy curtain without so much as a “Hide your eyes” to Molly or my mom. “You’ll want to see this one, ladies,” she said.

I tried to pull a Venus-on-a-half-shell maneuver with my hair and my hands, hiding my lady bits as much as possible, but my pathetic attempt at modesty was unnecessary as all eyes in the dressing room were on the silk tulle layers of the gown. As it swayed on its hanger, I noticed subtle crystals peeking through the folds in the voluminous skirt. Swoon.

Employing a device that looked like a giant crowbar, Brigitte forced me to pour my pre-wedding-diet hips into the size 0 and had the buttons fastened down my back before my flesh could burst free. I was disconcerted. Vaguely humiliated, even. I felt like a sausage whose casing was too small.

I turned, disappointment on my face, to Molly and my mom. “I look like a joke, don’t I?”

Molly’s eyes were like saucers. “Oh, Wiggs,” she said, her eyes full of emotion.

I knew it. I knew it! Brigitte’s hard stares at my winter-soft physique hadn’t simply been the result of her lifelong goal to be able to hide behind a toothpick. Sure, she hadn’t actually said anything about my body, but I knew what she was thinking, and she was right. Now Molly thought so, too.

I should just get married in a bathrobe. I could never pull off the ball gown I’d been dreaming of since I could say “printheth” in my toddler’s lisp.

I glanced at my mom and saw her clutching her heart.

Okay, it wasn’t that bad, was it?

Was I really giving my mom heartburn with my over-the-top wedding dress preferences?

I turned slowly to look in the mirror and survey the damage. There, standing before me, was exactly what I’d been fantasizing since I was a little girl.

The dress was…perfect. The skirt drifted to the floor, forming a large bell with a four-foot train that would have made Disney animators jealous. The bodice nipped in at the narrowest part of my waist and
suddenly I found myself glad for my curvy hips. The warm ivory color of the delicate tulle set off creamy peach tones in my skin, causing my blue eyes to take on a cerulean hue. My hair, pulled carelessly back and slightly frizzy from the frenzy of dress changes suddenly seemed carefree and romantic. A soft sweetheart neckline, bordered by glinting crystals, gave me nontrashy cleavage (how’s that for a miracle?), and huzzah! My arms looked slender.

The skinny bitch got it right. This dress was The One.

I happily skipped about the entire store, jumping up on the runway and flouncing to and fro, checking myself out in the mirrored walls and squealing like a contestant on
The Bachelor.

I looked Brigitte in her flat eyes and said, “This is it. I’ll take it.”

In a flash, her face came to life and her expression changed to what can only be described as a barracuda with a plump, juicy gold-fish in its sights. “Great,” she cackled, steepling her fingers (seriously, she really did steeple her fingers). “This one is $12,000. Plus tailoring, fitting, prewedding storage, dewrinkling, steaming, refitting, day-of fitting, postwedding storage.” She might as well have added post-divorce repurposing for good measure.

I’d been waiting for my mom to burst into tears when I found the dress of my dreams. And she did, but I’ll never know if it was the sight of her little girl in the bridal gown, or the price tag that broke her down.

My lower lip began to tremble. Twelve
thousand
dollars? But that was almost my entire wedding budget! Wildly, my mind began to race, trying to divine a way for me to afford the gown.
You could have this dress if you fed your guests squirt cheese on Rye Crisps and downgraded the music to a kazoo quartet,
I told myself.

You could offer to moonlight here as a salesgirl and work off some of the cost,
I thought. I looked at Brigitte and realized I’d never make it in the underworld.

Then I was hit by a lightning bolt of genius.
Run!
I heard the voice in my head screaming.
Run now! While she’s not expecting it!
As my leg
muscles tensed, I was already calculating how much jail time I could get for stealing a $12,000 dress. I edged toward the door, trying to recall exactly where I’d parked the getaway car. And then I caught another glimpse of myself in the mirror—this time from across the room, where the fine details on the dress (including the designer’s name embroidered into the tag) weren’t as apparent.

You know what I looked like?

A bride. A bride in a big, white dress. A young, excited bride who was glowing with happiness over the prospect of decades spent with her soul mate.