Cornflower Blue

It's getting to be finals anxiety time at the law school, but instead of describing that in gruesome detail, I'm going to write about going dress shopping.

7 of my closest friends have agreed to stand at the alter with me and S during out wedding. They're no maids, but they are an incredible group of women with all sorts of skills and interests and ways they enrich my life. Seeing as they're quite varied in style, I offered them the opportunity to buy their own dresses in some shade of blue. After much emailing, however, it was determined that choosing their own dresses was provoking serious anxiety among them, and so there was a vote in favor of tradition.

Over the past month I've been lucky to go dress shopping with two of my "brideswomen" (as I said, they're no maids). It's a very odd dynamic, choosing clothing for other people; and choosing one dress for seven people of varying coloration, body type and personality no less. I've given up the idea of trying to find anything that anyone will actually wear again and have settled on the goal of trying to find something that everyone can at least feel good and comfortable in for one night.

I had done some web browsing of various styles (ah yes, productive procrastination from work, is there anything better?) and sent some preliminary ideas around that were favorably received. So when A and I bravely headed to the dress shop in Georgetown, we had something in mind. I assumed that the shop would be swanky and snotty (mostly snotty) as all things Georgetown tend to be, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this place was a hole in the wall -- at least we wouldn't be paying for the fancy decor in the price of the dresses.

From floor to ceiling this place is chock full of taffeta, satin, patent leather tuxedo shoes, starched white shirts, black jackets, and hangers everywhere. Since the proprietor was less than gregarious and could hardly tear himself away from AOL, we dove into the dresses ourselves. Putting all of our weight against the gowns allowed us to budge the line of dresses just enough to untangle a hanger and draw out the design we wanted to look at. After we'd expended most of our strength selecting a few dresses, we asked to try them on. "Uh, yes, let me just get a few things out of the dressing room." And off this man shuffled around the corner. After 5 minutes he came back, wearing the same dead-pan expression, "Well, there is just too much stuff back there, so you'll just have to squeeze in around it."

The "dressing room" was a cubby in the back of the shop. Once we huffed and puffed our way through the curtain of satin and sequins (there was no actual curtain, a row of dresses served as the privacy screen), we caught our breath and noted that we'd be sharing the dressing space this afternoon with an odd looking burnt mannequin bust. As we began undressing A kept looking at the ceiling, as did I.

Standing in our underwear, I asked her "You looking for the hidden camera too?" "Yup," she replied, prompting much muffled laughter. We managed to find something great, or at least something that two of the women expressed enthusiasm about wearing, and I'm proud of both myself, D and A for being able to look beyond the sample size's "foam green" color.

Creepy man and crazy shop aside, the dress and the $30, no-taxes discount we got works for me. I know that every bride swears they won't make their bridesmaids wear something awful, and I'm no exception. If you want to see for yourself whether I have or have not lost it (yet), you can view the dress we chose by looking at top style 110 and skirt style 206 in cornflower at:

http://www.alfredsungdresses.com/index.cfm?go=separates