O be joyful

I picked up my wedding dress from the tailor’s today. They did a really nice job of shortening and adjusting the dress for me, but oh man, the sticker shock!

I do not lie when I say the alterations cost more than the actual dress did. I stumbled onto this dress in an outlet store near my home. I did not plan on buying an off the rack “deal” – I was determined to buy a swanky dress in an uncomfortable, fancy dress shop. On a whim last April, my mother dragged me to Orfus Road, which has several bridal places that don’t require appointments. She wanted me to see what was out there before we really got down to the serious dress hunting. The first place we went to was a bust. I tried on about 5 dresses that just didn’t do it for me – and the prices seemed high for what were non-designer dresses.



The second place was the outlet. It was the kind pf place where you just want to turn and go back from whence you came. The salesgirl was my kind of lady, so I stayed. (I happen to love bossy ladies from the Caribbean.) As I wandered through the aisles with Pauline, throwing out key words like “lace” and “ruffles” and “I think I am a size 8 or 10”, we both stopped in front of one particularly lacy and ruffled gown. It was unlike anything I had seen online or in magazines. “This one must have just come in!” Pauline told me, while I managed to say “but what size is it?” My mother heard the words and came zooming towards us as we discovered that it was a size 8 – on the small size of my “bridal dress size”, which do not seem to follow any sizing chart known to Man.

Somehow it fit and it was perfect. The lace, the ruffles, the straps, everything was right. This place had a no-holds, no-return policy, so a call was placed to my sister, 15 km away. She dropped everything to come and approve my selection. The price was absolutely fantastic, about a quarter of what I was expecting to pay for a dress based on weeks of online research and leafing through glossy bridal magazines.

And so the tailor bill today is really depressing, especially since reality has invaded my bridal dreams. Last April, everything was delightful; money seemed like no object since D was well employed. Today I am happy at the prospect of my marriage and I am in no way disappointed with our arrangements, but the cold hard weight of our bills is a lot to bear.

I wanted to buy a pair of shoes today to wear on our honeymoon but that will have to wait.

Amidst all of these worries, inexplicably I have three words bouncing around in my brain – O be joyful – and truly there are a thousand reasons to be happy this Spring.