Well, I did it.
No longer can you call me inexperienced or naive, for I have expanded my borders and taken the leap. What with my impending marriage and all, I thought it was probably about time.
Time...to attend a Bridal Show.
I had found many references to these shows in my newly acquired arsenal of wedding magazines and how-to guides ("Wedding Planning for Dummies" is on my shelf, no lie). Pictures of beaming brides-to-be tasting wedding cake, winning fabulous prizes, and ogling the latest trends in bridal fashion splayed across the glossy pages like a tantalizing morsel of forbidden fruit - dare I plunge myself into this girly frivolity, shucking away my life-long image of my self as an independent Chick who lives for science fiction and wouldn't be caught dead in Swarovski crystals???
Alas, I dared.
I arranged to meet up with a friend at the show, a fellow soon-to-be-Mrs. who is getting hitched in the fall. Neither of us has done much planning, and it was a first-time expo experience for both of us. We went in with high hopes and a sense of excitement - which of us would be winning a chic honeymoon to Fiji?? How many dresses would we need to snap pictures of during the runway show?? And perhaps most importantly, just how many caterers would we get to sample, and could we possibly procure a second helping if necessary??
Sadly, all of my bridal show dreams were crushed, juiced, and sieved into the bottoms of my feet within seconds of leaving the registration table. The organization behind the show didn't get as much turn-out as they'd hoped - either from attendees OR from vendors - and therefore the show had been moved from a massive ballroom to an oversized conference room, where three aisles of perhaps eight vendors each succeeded in looking rather sparse in even such a small space.
We timidly meandered from stall to stall, collecting a plethora of business cards from vendors we had no interest in and filling out countless forms for services we didn't need, mostly in hopes of winning a promising drawing later in the day. We slugged our way through hard sell after hard sell until I felt my ears would start to bleed.
This began to feel like a fruitless venture, namely because both my friend and I are getting married out of town, and therefore we wouldn't be using any of these L.A.-based vendors. But we plugged relentlessly on, in the hopes of maybe getting some fresh ideas for escort cards or floral centerpieces, and all of that chi-chi nonsense.
Finally, we reached the end of our trip through the mini conference hall, wearing matching glazed expressions, toting our plastic bags full of two tons of useless information, which of course was causing the bag handles to cut off the circulation to our fingertips.
And of all the things we had been promised? There was one cake tasting (not so great), no food whatsoever outside of a single chocolate fountain placed mysteriously behind the stacks of plates and napkins, so that you were forced to drip molten chocolate all over the next person in line's place setting (messy and really not worth the trouble), and the only stall to give away prizes at the show rather than via a drawing sometime next year was a bathing suit company - my friend won a $100 gift certificate (only good on purchases of at least $200 - at a BATHING SUIT store). And me? Well I certainly got the big pull of the day - I won the "chance to enter" their trip giveaway. REALLY?? I won an ENTRY FORM?!? Unfair.
After this hour and a half of total pain, confusion, and misery, we plunked ourselves into a couple of seats to watch the bridal fashion show. Finally, something that could live up to the hype! We would get to see our first wedding gowns close-up in person and perhaps deduce which style would be most flattering on our very different body types! Just before the show began, I whispered to my friend that I hoped they were using some "real" girls in addition to wafer-thin models, as it would be nice to see how these dresses would look on an actual real-live woman.
Lo and behold, my wishes were granted...and yes it's true: be careful what you wish for. VERY careful.
These girls were most definitely NOT models. Fine! I wanted to see real figures! However, they also appeared to be plucked off the street without a moment's notice, given no instruction on how to walk or even smile. One girl was so slow, she would've been dead last in a race against a turtle riding a snail...I mean, painfully slow. Instead of smiling, one of the girls wore a vacant stare, her mouth gaping open - she must have thought of this look as "chic" as opposed to "slow-witted."
And all of the dresses...all TEN of them (what?!? That's IT?!?)...were hideous. Awful. Ugliest things I'd ever seen. Not to mention they didn't even bother to find girls that would fit them. Some of the poor girls were far too short, tripping their way down the runway. Some of them were too heavy (one of whom even had her sloppily pinned together dress fall off right before exiting stage right). And some were too thin, the dress wrapping around them nearly twice and therefore giving us approximately zero idea of what it should actually look like.
Once the fashion parade from the seventh circle of hell finally wrapped up, my friend and I looked at one another and said, "Well...I guess we should go." The emcee was announcing that the bridesmaids' fashion show was about to begin as we swept up our belongings and made a mad dash for the exit...god forbid we have to sit through more of THAT.
We made it to the parking garage in one piece, laughed a little, hugged, and said our goodbyes. Driving myself home, thinking over what had just happened, I was caught between uncontrollable gales of laughter and an appalled silence. I felt I had just been through a war, lucky to come out the other side with all appendages intact (in this case, not arms and legs but rather my dignity and self-respect).
Yes, it was a nightmare, but I am proud of myself for getting in those trenches and tackling my inner "I-am-the-anti-bride" demons. I'm glad I tried something new, something wholly different from my everyday life, way out of my comfort zone...
...but I fear the repercussions of having given out my personal information to soooo many vendors, especially seeing as how I clearly have NOT won any drawings and therefore any correspondence will be of the salesman persuasion.
Thank the gods for caller ID. I wonder when the next wedding show is?
