Bride Crossing Part 3

It's not that I'm opposed to white dresses. Or white wedding dresses. Or spending good money on something quality, for that matter. It's just that I believe spending $1000 (or more) on a dress you will wear once is ludicrous. I don't care if you look like a fucking angel sent straight from heaven in the dress - it will never be worth it. When Kim Kardashian was married and everyone kept saying she looked like some Armenian princess, all I saw was a dress purchased from whore-island where the townspeople spent an hour gluing on cheap lace-like details around the neckline. Favoring a prime rib buffet dinner and open bar over a $1000 (or more) faux-virgin dress is much more up my thought-alley. This kind of logic is what landed me at the neighborhood consignment shops in search of a white dress for our civil ceremony.

Reflecting back, it really is no surprise when I picked up my wedding dress from the cleaners that the silvery/beige beading on the bust happened to have turned to bright white during the cleaning process. After demonstrating a "what-the-fuck" look on my face and demanding an explanation, Roots (the dry cleaning staff member) casually told me what happened. I know for a fact her explanation included phrases such as "it's really only a wear-once type of dress" and "the beads were dipped in color, not *made* with color pigment" and "there's always the possibility that this could happen" and "at least they didn't melt off" but all I really heard was blah, blah, blah. And I saw spots - dark spots made of red and black rage - it resembled something close to the moment before you pass out or faint.

The entire situation really wasn't about the fact that I had dug my own grave, so to speak, by purchasing a previously owned dress that turned out to be altered slightly after cleaning. It was more about the fact that none of the staff members, upon inspecting my dress at the time of the drop-off, bothered to clue me in to this possibility. (Um, isn't there a waiver you need to sign?) Although my initial reaction was otherwise exampled, my dress wasn't ruined, the beading wasn't fucked up (entirely), and I still looked like a million bucks at the ceremony. Rigatoni should have awarded me the Medal of Emotional Honor for not calling up the cleaners, demanding to speak to every supervisor available, and cussing them to tears in undecipherable foreign languages.

Until next time...