If you know me, then you know that I am pretty laid back most of the time, but when I get stressed out it is a full -fledged attack and I worry and stress way too much and sometimes a small temper might flare. Yes, it runs in the family :) Therefore, you can imagine my surprise at how smoothly this wedding planning stuff has gone so far. I HAD not cried over anything YET, mainly because it has been so much fun for me and I've thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it. For the most part, I'd say I've been pretty good about staying calm during the whole thing........that is until Saturday's dress fitting disaster happened.
I had my first dress fitting on Saturday during my lunch break. My mom was meeting me at the seamstress' shop with my dress. I wrote down the address of the shop for her because neither one of us had been there before. I called my mom from work to see if she was there yet. She told me she found the shop and was there waiting. When we walked into the shop my mom said, "Hi. We have a 4:00 appointment for a fitting. Are you T?" Her name was obviously not T, but we'll leave it at that for this story. The lady in the shop answered "Yes, come on in. You can go in there and put on your dress." Let me just say that the lady was oriental and spoke English, but she was hard to understand and we didn't know how well she could understand us. I get the dress on, it fits great. She is convinced it looks so good that it doesn't need to be altered at all. So we start pinning up the length because clearly it was too long. Then, we decided it needed to be taken in at the bust a little so she puts two pins in the center of the bust area. My mom asks her about a bustle in the back so the dress won't drag at the reception while I'm dancing. She tells us that she doesn't do bustles and that my dress didn't need one because the train was so pretty we should let it show. I was like, ughhh no that's not gonna cut it. I do not want people stepping all over my dress while I'm trying to dance. So she agrees and tells us she can make a little hook and hook it on one of the buttons in the back. We were a little weirded out by that because we remembered when I first tried the dress on, the ladies in the shop told us their seamstress could do a French or a European bustle. We continued on and started talking about steaming the dress and veil before the wedding day. She said the dress didn't need to be steamed and that it looked fine. That's when my mom and I really started to worry. We already discussed steaming with the bridal salon ladies and decided it was a must. The underneath layers of the dress were so wrinkled because it had been sitting in a bag for almost 4 months. Clearly, it needed to be steamed. I was also having an issue with the hip area being a little too big and having too much excess material that created a little bulge in the front when I walked and it was really annoying me. I pointed it out to her and she said it was fine and that she couldn't take it in anymore. Even though, we both were feeling so uneasy about the whole appointment, we left the dress with her and she told us it would be ready in about 2 weeks. My mom and I walked outside the shop and looked at each other in awe and decided we were going to call the bridal salon and let them know how our appointment went and that we weren't very impressed. We both got in our separate cars, my mom took my shoes with her, and I went back to work.
When I got to work, I sat down at my station and pulled out my phone to show my co-workers a picture of my dress and veil. My friend asked me how it went and I was literally on the verge of tears because I was really unhappy about it. She could tell something was wrong and that I was pouting. By this time it was 4:30......mind you, my appointment with T was at 4. My phone started ringing and when I looked at the screen it said Seamstress T calling. I thought, hmm that's weird, I just left her shop.....maybe we forgot to talk about something and she has a question about it. The lady on the other end said "Hi Quincee. This is T, you had a 4 appointment with me and it's 4:30. I was just wondering where you were?" Immediately it clicked in my head and I started to panic. I explained to T that I just left her shop and already did my fitting. She said, "No my last appointment was with Miranda and she left me with her shoes. Unless you go by a different name and left your dress and shoes here with me, then it wasn't you." I definitely didn't leave my shoes at the place so I knew she wasn't talking about me. That's when I started to sweat, cry, panic, and totally FREAK out. All the girls in the salon were looking at me like I was nuts and they kind of figured out what was going on. They all said, "Run, go get your dress."
If this story is totally confusing and I've completely lost you, let me sum it up. I took my wedding dress to the wrong seamstress. The lady I was supposed to take it to worked for the bridal shop I bought it from and she specializes in wedding dresses only. The lady I accidentally mistook her for owns a tailoring shop and probably doesn't do many wedding dresses. Don't get me wrong, she was a nice lady and has been in business for years, but we definitely caught her off guard and we didn't feel like she was very knowledgeable in that department. I'm sure she would have done a great job.
I rush back to the shop and luckily they were still open. The sign on their front door said they closed at 3 so I just knew by the time I got back there, they would be closed and she would start cutting on the dress on Sunday, while they were closed. That made me really panic. Luckily, I made it back in time. I explained it to her and she was completely confused and scared to death because I stormed in there in a huge tizzy, but she graciously gave my dress back to me, pins in it and all. Thankfully, T is amazing and said she would wait for me and still do my fitting. I was her last appointment and she almost didn't call me because her phone battery was about to die. Hallelujah that she decided to call and check on me because if not, we never would have realized it and the other lady would have altered my dress. WHEW...it was a close one! I'm sure T thought I was a crazy bridezilla nut because I freaked out so bad on the phone with her and at the time, she had no idea what was going on and couldn't understand a word I was saying because I was crying and so worked up.
T is my hero! We did the fitting and she knew exactly what she was talking about. She said we definitely had to steam the dress and veil. She showed me both a French and European bustle. She showed me what it would look like to add cap sleeves to the dress and said she could do it. The first thing she said when she looked at the bust area was, "Why did she put the pins in the front if this area is too big? They should be on the sides since it has to be taken in under the armpits." And she also told me she could take it in in the hip area and get rid of the bulging. Oh, you have no idea how happy both my mom and I were after meeting with the real T. She made us feel so much better about everything and we immediately felt a sense of relief.
Moral of the story is....make sure you have the right address and make sure you really verify you're at the right place and talking to the right person. Poor lady at the other place must have been so confused the whole time. Especially since we kept referring to her as T and saying that the bridal place told us she could do all those things.
After leaving T shop, my mom and I were able to laugh pretty good about the whole situation. I'm glad I got my bridezilla moment out of the way. We both hope that that's the worst thing that happens to us throughout the whole wedding planning process. Oh, what a day!
