Say Yes to the Dress

The past two weekends, I have watched roughly 574,382 episodes of Say Yes to the Dress on TLC.  I prefer the Atlanta show (for a few reasons), but I watch both.  And every time I watch my little mini marathon, I find myself crying at least once.  Last weekend Mick had guys' night Friday night, and at 1 am with him gone and the kids sleeping soundly, I was sobbing uncontrollably over one particular bride.*

Full disclosure:  I definitely get a kick out of the fact that when I was wedding dress shopping, I shopped at Kleinfeld -- flew home to shop there with my mom -- and ended up buying my gown at Bridals By Lori in Atlanta.  If you're not familiar with SYTTD, those are the two shops featured on the show.  I can compare the two shops personally, and that’s fun for me.  (I will also say that the ladies at Kleinfeld were not nearly as nice to me as they are on TV.)   If anyone cares, I can tell you the story of my wedding dress shopping, but for now let’s say that I gave up on wedding dress shopping for about six months after I visited Kleinfeld.  Then I realized I needed a dress in a hurry and that I had missed every possible deadline advocated by The Knot and every other major bridal publication.  I finally ended up taking a Saturday and going to Bridals By Lori, and wouldn’t you know it, I ended up picking out my perfect dress.  (There was a lot of irony with the way the story unfolded, and as I said, I’m happy to share the whole happy-ending tale if anyone cares.) All alone with no one shopping with me – the only drama was my own tears!   I think I was supposed to feel bad about it, and in a sense I did, but in a sense I didn’t.  Thing was, I shop better by myself.  (Well, a thousand-and-one “bless your heart, you’re here a-LONE?!”s notwithstanding.  I definitely did get a lot of sideways looks … )

Anyway, back to the point of my story.  I miss my mom every time I watch SYTTD.  I miss my sisters.  I wish that for my wedding dress shopping and my sister Kim’s, that we’d had the entourage to all go together.  Actually, maybe I don’t really wish that.  We’re more of a stress-each-other-out-when-we’re-all-together kind of family!  But I do wish my mom had been able to be there (even though I can say with certainty that she’d have said every dress looked beautiful on me!) because if it had been just the two of us, maybe it wouldn’t have been overly dramatic. 

On the other hand, I know how lucky I am to even have my mom, for a million and one reasons.  

Anyway, this post is for you, Mom.  No, we didn't shop together for THE DRESS, but I think it worked out ok.  Don't you?

And readers, if you need a gown and can go to Bridals By Lori, I don't know what it is like now, but 11 years ago they were nothing short of wonderful.

--Jen

*rather than make this a tearjerker post, I figured I’d put the footnote here:  the bride’s mother had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.  Having recently lost someone I love to a brain tumor, I was particularly affected by the contrast of the photos of the mom when she was healthy, and seeing her so sick that on the show.  Shopping with her daughter was one of the very last things they were able to do together, and I could not stop crying.

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