Tuesday, January 19, 2010

the perfect fit

My first bridesmaid dress for 2010 has arrived! I waited until I got home to put it on because in my experience it usually falls off the top, slides down the back or adds three sizes to the hips on the first try. No one needs to see any of that. To my surprise, this dress fit perfectly! Everything is covered that should be and the length is almost perfect. The right heels will fix that. Up until now, I thought that the bridesmaid dress designers were in cahoots with the tailors & seamstresses in my neighborhood.

They see me coming with a plastic garment bag in tow and start laughing with dollar signs in their eyes.

A few years ago I took a green number to a dry cleaner/seamstress to have the strapless top taken in just a pinch. It fit like it should but the work seemed a little shotty and I was shocked to find out the going rate to sew a few inches of fabric. Not to mention this lady was flaky and kept postponing my pick up date. That obviously made me panic and have nightmares that consisted of me in my underwear at the wedding. Finally, after 3 weeks, $60 and 2 inches I was on my way with the altered dress.

Fast forward a year and I had a spaghetti strap dress with triangle tops that flopped right over when I put it on and exposed everything! This was a tailor emergency and I needed to step it up a notch. I went to a divo tailor in my neighborhood that everyone raved over. He hemmed all of the girl’s designer jeans in town and personally tailored Phillies’ Shane Victorino’s threads as well. He had to be good with that rep. I was happily surprised to see that his only employee was a grandma with very broken English stitching away in the back. Perhaps it was his grandma. Either way, I liked it. Something about this scene seemed very authentic to me. This team could handle all of my bridesmaid alterations moving forward...hopefully. This had to be the answer that I was searching for!

Two weeks later I went back for the spaghetti strap dress. I put it on and jumped up on the pedestal in front of the mirror. Hmm, it fit better in the hips than before but something was wrong…I was more exposed than before I started! Was it possible that they took too much fabric off? I begrudgingly handed over $75 to grandma’s boss anyway. The divo told me that he would be happy to alter an old bridesmaid dress into “couture”. He went on to show me his photo of him and Shane posing amongst rows of garment bags in his tailor shop.

I haven’t gone back.

I threw in the towel and self consciously wore the over altered spaghetti strap number. What was a girl to do? Drink her insecurities away at the reception? Seemed like the right answer to me. So I over served my over exposed self.

-The perennial bridesmaid

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