The Odyssey to get my dream gown(2)

The bridal salon creates a great ambience that sets a prospective bride in a bridal mood, namely a spending mood. My blood started curdling when I found out the average gown here is $3,000, ten times more than the gown at David’s bridal! The bridal apparel industry must assume that girls who get engaged collectively lose their common sense. It is assumed that we will act like zombies and throw away a couple of thousand dollars for something that I normally wouldn’t pay $100 for. Shopping for a wedding gown is also a completely different experience than buying a cocktail dress at Ann Taylor. To get a cocktail dress, you’ll pick out a design and then try on different sizes that the store carries. You can walk out of the store happily with a dress in the right size. Not for the bridal apparel industry, who famously declares that each dress is made for “just one bride’s dream to become a reality.” Most bridal salons carry only one sample dress for each design. To get the size that fits you, a bride has to wait patiently for 14 weeks or more before her gown finally arrives. Now that is sooooooo “Special.” Then the shop will get you into another nightmare called “custom-fitting”, which is another fancy name for “alteration” that a big shop sometimes charge you more than $200 for. I often find it paradoxical that if they are really committed to make a dress just for this special bride, why can’t they custom-make a dress according to her measurements and save her from the process of alteration. A gown is not that special if it is made religiously according to the designer’s size chart and not your measurements.

One of few outcasts from this law on made-to-order bridal gown is David’s bridal. By carrying each one of its designs from sizes 0 to 24, David’s bridal is doing many brides a big charity. I didn’t go for it because it didn’t have the designs that I was looking for.

At the fancy store I was assigned an assistant to help me put the gowns on. With a long train, layers of laces and built-in petticoat or slip, the wedding gown seemed quite difficult to tackle by myself. The assistant would hold the gown open from the bottom and ask me to cross my arms, raise them above my head and “dive” into this heavy outfit. While the assistant slowly pulled the dress down, I found my head gradually emerge out of the neckline. I then walked out of the dressing room with my assistant holding the train for me. Now that makes me feel like a princess with a lady-in-waiting.  Standing in front of a mirror that reflects me in a big sample gown, clearly oversized, I heard the assistant start chanting by my ears how beautifully it fits me. It felt good the first time you heard it, but it soon turned into a statement invariably gushing out of them: it is soooooooooo gorgeous on you ! Sometimes, I thought that even if I put a white garbage bag on me, they would still say something like “oh, my goodness, sweetheart, that is so “you” with that natural look!”

I fell in love with a pretty sheath-line gown with a distinguished keyhole back. It cost about $5,000, something I could never bring myself to pay for. The assistant and the shop owner quickly reminded me it is designed by Monique Lhuillier, the bridal designer that made Britney Spears’ wedding gown. That didn’t impress me at all. To the contrary, Britney Spears’ hectic marriage which constantly bordered on separation, cheating and ultimately wound up in divorce, is a great example that a fairy-tale wedding gown doesn’t guarantee a fairy-tale ending. By the time I left the store, they promised me that they would throw in a complimentary alteration worth $200 IF I came back later in the afternoon and ordered it.

A deal is no deal if I can’t sleep on it. Goodbye, Monique Lhuillier gown !

所有跟帖： 

• even if I put a white garbage bag on me, -VIol- ♀ (136 bytes) () 12/05/2006 postreply 10:41:13

• 谢谢。。当时挑婚纱挑得我都烦死了。 -MaggieMay_Pei- ♀ (24 bytes) () 12/05/2006 postreply 10:51:17