The Story of My Wedding Dress, Part One

I knew exactly what kind of wedding gown I wanted. After all, I had spent countless hours on the Internet, Pinteresting every dress that caught my eye and then e-mailing to a select group of eight ladies for their feedback and approval. Of course, everyone has an opinion, and it is hard to get an idea of what you want without first having tried it on.

I was also on a budget; I had decided that I didn't want to go over $500 USD, which did not seem like a huge amount at the time, but when I look back I do realize that it is a lot of cash to spend on ONE item of your wedding budget. Suffice to say, I was willing to scrape and borrow and do whatever was possible to buy the wedding gown of my dreams. Even if it meant going broke in the process.

I was just about decided on ordering a dress off the Internet off one of those knockoff Ebay sites, that re-create designer for 1/4 of the price. This also required hours upon hours of researching bridal feedback on certain sites, more mass e-mails asking for approval and suggestions, and dogging my poor (then) fiance, until everyone was saturated with my Wedding Gown Indecision and neediness. Something kept me from clicking on the purchasing button. I still wasn't sure, and it was killing me slowly.

One day I decided to drive up to Aguadulce (about 30 minutes away) with Drew's aunt who was visiting from the US. We were planning on hitting an outlet store called La Importadora Americana, which basically sells new and gently used goods brought by container from the US. I had about $20 bucks to my name, as I had no desire to buy anything worth more than that.

We got to the OUTLET store of La Importadora without even knowing it. All the items smelled funny and were broken or in an awful condition. It was the worst of the worst and we didn't see anything that caught our eyes, and were generally horrified by how rundown it all seemed.

As I was walking out of the OUTLET store, I noticed a small room on my left hand, stacked with all manner of cocktail dresses. This caught my attention, so I ventured in to this small, stuffy room and my jaw dropped. Lined up floor to ceiling were at least two hundred wedding gowns, from all manner of decades: puffy sleeved, high necked, lace, white, ivory, chapel train, strapless, the list went on and on. Awful, beautiful, amazing, ugly, it was all here in the middle of nowhere Aguadulce, forgotten in an outlet store.

I immediately started rummaging through the piles of gowns, my hope slowly sparking a little flame in my heart. Could it possibly be that I find the wedding gown of my dreams here? Is it possible? I walked out of the room to ask for help from the staff. I don't think they had ever sold a wedding gown, and didn't much help me out. Ill prepared is a small term to describe them. I was already sweating buckets when I decided to take matters into my own hands, so I grabbed a fold-able metal chair and crawled on to it so I could get a better view at sizing and styles.

By this time I was sweating buckets, as the room was tiny, badly ventilated with an old lazy fan, and an air conditioner that hadn't worked for many, many years. I found three gowns that were more or less what I was searching for: lace, NOT strapless, with a small train if possible (I wasn't really picky, after all, I was in an OUTLET store!).

Once I had the three gowns in hand, I asked the attendant (oh ha ha ha! Worst attendant ever!) if there was a changing room. She shrugged and said there wasn't one, but she could offer me a bathroom, or I could do like most patrons of the OUTLET store, and change behind the cocktail dresses in the back of the stuff little room. Well, I knew for sure I wasn't going to drag the wedding gowns into the potty room, so I shrugged and headed to the back.

I took off most of my clothes and was left with my sports bra and underwear. I was feeling very, very sticky and uncomfortable, but I was determined to see if any of those dresses could work. I managed to get the first dress on after much shimmying and squirming, as it happened to be a mermaid cut, and my very voluptuous and sweaty body did NOT slide in. It ended up looking awful me, and I learned a very important lesson: most women with rather large behinds DO NOT look good in mermaid cuts.

The first dress left me feeling deflated and uninspired; all of that work for nothing! These wedding gowns were turning out to be more work than they were worth!



Part Two coming up!