Alterations

Well, I think it's official. Alterations is (so far, by far) the most stressful part of our wedding planning.

I went to my first fitting appointment tonight. I blindly trusted the recommendation of strangers on the internet, and scheduled an appointment at a random bridal shop in a random New Jersey town somewhat southwest of Newark. You, being rational people, may already be wondering what in hell I was thinking when I made this decision (or not have any clue what I'm talking about, depending on your knowledge of New Jersey geography). Well, what I was thinking was that I was scared to pick any shop, I was overwhelmed about the idea of searching for one, I was scared of any New York shop (not to mention having to drive into the city to drop the dress off), and just generally wanted to make a decision and move on.

Of course tonight as I was rushing to leave work on time the plan suddenly didn't seem so good. I left my last home visit 15 minutes late, waited forever for a train, waited an even longer forever for a bus, and arrived home with about 40 minutes before my appointment. I rushed frantically around the house collecting the things I needed and made it out the door with 30 minutes on the clock. By the time I and all of my stuff were settled in the car, the phone was set to navigate me there, and I was ready to go... I was at 20 minutes. The friendly people at Google used their massive privacy-invading database of personal information to tell me that in current traffic conditions it would take me 47 minutes to arrive at my destination. And, let's be honest, in the NYC metro area, you pretty much always need more time than any electronic prediction. Great.

I won't bore you with details of the stressful drive in stop-and-go traffic, or scare you with the fact that I had to find the bridal shop phone number while driving to call and let them know I was running late and see if I should even bother coming (oops, guess I just did.)

After some debate they graciously allowed me to still be fitted, on the condition that I accepted a fitting in the bridesmaid area. No problem. The seamstress seemed flustered and a bit annoyed by being in the wrong area and having to do several things at once. More troubling though, what had somehow seemed obvious about altering my dress to the friendly Minnesota shopkeeper and her trusty seamstress sidekick apparently did not seem at all obvious or easy to my new seamstress friend. She wanted to shorten it in a way that made the dress look stupid, and she made disapproving tsk-tsk noises when I told her what friendly Minnesota shopkeeper told me about several things (i.e. how to shorten it, the importance of a bra, etc.). The pins kept popping out, and I'm fairly convinced that a some important pins were not in place when I put my dress back into the bag. Insert much stress here.

On the plus side, she did give me a price estimate that was lower than I had prepared myself to hear. But, overall, I have one piece of advice for anyone planning a wedding involving an expensive white dress: get your dress altered at the same shop you buy it at. Seriously. Just do it. (This public servie message was also approved by one Miss Becky, aka the other bride.)

P.S. Thank you Becky for having dinner ready when I got home.