The Week of Wedding Disasters

Welcome to the week of apocolyptic wedding disasters. I knew it had to be coming.

Instead of telling you the whole sad sorry story, I'll go with one.

My wedding dress.

I bought my wedding dress in Sydney but had to bring it back to Wellington to be altered. At the recommendation of the store back in Sydney I took it to the one place I didn't want to, Brides on Thorndon.

Anyone who's ever lived in Wellington will know what I'm talking about. The ladies (and I use that term loosely) have a hard earned and well deserved reputation for being sobbish, rude, arrogant, unhelpful, patronising and generally turning on of the most fun shopping trips of your life into a real downer. Unfortunately, they also have the best range of dresses and tailors to make alterations.

I tried everywhere I could think of to find someone to alter my dress, but alas, everyone else in the city who would handle the complexity was long since booked and so I was forced in November to avail myself of their services.

I was on even worse footing than the average punter to begin with since I hadn't even bought my dress from them so they had no reason to be civil. But I bit my tongue while I was measured and pinched and eyes rolled as I tried to explain what I wanted and generally made to feel like a big nuisance. I figured that to get my dress down well I could just suck it up.

Then I Tuesday I show up for my next fitting.

We (I'd made Bec and Kristen come with me because I didn't want to face them alone again) showed up on time. Unfortunately, the tailoress wasn't quite so keen. Snooty Boss woman informed us she wasn't here but would be back "sometime". No apology, no "would you like to reschedule?", no "I'll give her a call and see how far away she is". Just the stare of evil.

Why don't you just try on your dress? Came next. My dress was thrown into a dressing room and we were left to it. No offer of help or assistance.

With Bec and Kristen both in there with me, seven minutes and large amounts of puffing, pinching, tugging, pulling, straining, sucking and a few impolite words later, we came to the same conclusion. My previously too big dress had been taken down about two sizes instead of the one it needed.

The full length mirror revealed my previously gorgeous dress now looked like a sausage casing about to split. Dancing, eating, sitting, deep breathing all no longer an option for my wedding day.

I'm standing in the middle of the salon. All three staff have mysteriously disappeared. Oh wait. Someone is doing some ironing in the backroom, the other two are standing contemptuously about three metres away looking at me like I'm the spawn of the Bride of Frankenstein.

One deigns to yell "You've got it on crooked!" Well honey you try squeezing your body into a size 6 wedding dress when you are not and see how straight you manage to get it on!

Then the tailoress waltzes in with someone else and they all get into a huddle whispering and the words "crooked" "oh well didn't even buy it from us" "bit tight" and the the insinuation that I must have been busy

between the last fitting and now make their way to my ears. I think that Bec is about to hit someone.

That is the last I see of the tailoress. She disappears, never bothering to ask if I'm happy with any of the alternations or even whether I'm enjoying having my spleen wrapped around my spine.

Then we find that Bec's veil isn't quite right with my dress so I'm going to need to buy one. Well, even that was too much bother. Pouty saleswoman were plainly not feeling the need to make any money because after Miss Pouty #2 stomped around muttering and threw one at Bec, we decided we'd just help outselves.

By the end of 50 minutes we'd all had enough. I wasn't happy but since the compression of my internal organs was plainly my own fault for eating too many pies in the last couple of weeks, rather than Stacey making an error and taking it in too much, it was obvious that we weren't going to be getting any joy from them. All I wanted to do was just give them the money and take my dress and go so that I never ever had to come anywhere near the horrible place again.

Anyway upshot is that my dress can't really taken out without risking ruining it so in the next four weeks I either need to lose a rib or about eight pounds, give or take a kidney because I hear you only need one of those to live.

This blog is brought to you by the letters B and T and all the lettuce I'll be living it up on for Christmas.