vegas, STDs and babies

I took a bit of a sabbatical from all of the blogging to realize I missed ranting and raving about weddings and how I typically spend my weekends – at showers playing bridal bingo. Therefore, I am back and kicking off my return with a bang! 2011’s first bachelorette party is about to begin. Vegas. This weekend.

Can’t Wait!  (insert Bart Scott/Jets voice - google it if you don't know)

But as they say…what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas so you probably won’t hear much else about that trip.

I will have a big blog announcement coming soon though. Stay tuned my loyal readers…er, mom. Anyone else out there?

In the meantime, I have updated the wedding countdowns and, well, they never seem to end. We’re counting far into 2012 already. You should see my fridge. The save the dates continue to arrive. 

It seems that the 4x6 postcard style save the date has made a major comeback for 2011. Magnet save the dates are apparently so 2000 and late. I’ve got none.

Oh baby!

Baby? Yes they’re due to arrive daily in 2011.  It's evident that everyone is living happily ever after out there.  I’m attending so many showers; I’ve got to start wearing rain gear. Sorry. That was lame. Anyway, more stories to come on that front.  (Get it? Front?  I can't stop myself.)

And for the first time in my history as a bridesmaid, I am going to attempt to wear a bridesmaid dress again!  The challenge is to wear the dress long in March and then cut it and wear it short in May.  Can I pull it off?  I know the suspense is killing you but you'll have to wait and see!

For now, let’s hope my flight to luxurious 60 degree weather is not delayed due to more frigid snow.

-The perennial bridesmaid

behind the seams

I picked up my knee length red bridesmaid dress yesterday from the tailor. When I dropped it off it was practically ankle length and the straps were excessively long. The woman pinned, poked and cut the dress to the shape of my body. Yes actually cut it! Right before my eyes. In less than a week it magically fit thanks to my Korean Fairy Godmother.

With a price.

I’ve complained about this before. I know. Waa. But why does properly tailoring a dress have to cost so much? This was the highest yet. The alterations actually cost more than the dress itself in this case!

Don’t get me wrong, properly tailoring your clothes makes a world of difference. This isn’t an area that should be skimped on. (Although, I am guilty of saving some money by say, not taking the side of a dress in as it should be. I am the only one that suffers by looking 10 pounds heavier in the extra satin.)

Not this time though. It properly fits all around. I am going to wear this dress again. Famous last words.

I came to the conclusion that there must be a way to get dress alterations at a lower rate. I’ve tried a few things outside of the brick and mortar tailor shop.   No shop equals less overheard cost according to my theory.

• Naturally, I asked around for an old Italian neighbor who does alterations in her living room - right next to her plastic upholstered sofa. (is that just a Philly thing?) No one had a granny to recommend though.
• I trolled craigslist for a seamstress looking for work. None locally. Does anyone sew anymore?
• My last idea is to find a fashion design student. A senior preferably. Someone who knows what they’re doing and who actually WANTS to alter satin bridesmaid dresses for some extra cash. After all, I live about a mile from one of the nation’s leading fashion colleges. These students must live amongst me, right? Why can’t I find them and save some serious alteration money?

If you have a recommendation of a serious sewer that fits one of the 3 criteria above, I am all ears. I’ve got more dresses to alter…

-The perennial bridesmaid

suits you well

Last night I went suit shopping. Yes, suit shopping, not dress shopping. I thought us ladies had a lot of options in the formalwear department but let me tell you I learned a thing or two in my brief shopping excursion.

The suits chosen were from the executive collection, not to be confused with the signature, traveler or signature-gold suits. Is this sort of like a man differentiating between tank, spaghetti & halter straps? That’s how I felt when I picked up a signature but meant to grab the executive (no pun intended).

We settled on two suits…one is charcoal (not to be confused with gray) with a fine stripe. The choice was between a white stripe or light blue stripe. We went with blue. This reminded me of a time that I was asked to help decide between a white or ivory sash for a bridesmaid dress. We pined over it and weighed the pros and cons for days. As for the stripe, it took 2 minutes to decide based on eye color. Why don’t us ladies ever use the eye color technique?

We gazed over more patterns such as glen check, houndstooth, glen plaid, tweed, glen tilt tweed…who the hell is Glen anyway? They all looked grayish or tan to me.

The second suit, let’s call it brown, looks like a “faint plaid” pattern. I was quickly corrected by the salesman. This pattern is actually called windowpane. Ahh. This does make much more sense. Clever gentlemen.

Now that the suits were selected, it was onto alterations…
For women, this is where it usually gets ugly. We stand up on a pedestal with pins sticking out of us at every angle. We’re trying to lift and tuck like there’s no tomorrow. Not for men. They’re posed with 3 questions which have nothing to do with overexposing or underexposing skin or hiding wobbly bits.

1. Half break or full break? What the heck! I wouldn’t pay for anything that comes broken. Oh let’s review the photos of how the pant falls over the shoe. Wow, these guys are more detail oriented than I give them credit for. Full break, thanks. And with that, the salesman made one mark on the pant and no one's grandma was crawling on the flooring pinning up the hem.
2. Cuff or no cuff? This was a tough decision. Maybe more difficult than the actual suit decision. No cuff. Final.
3. Permanent resin crease? Well aren’t these guys fancy!

Onto accessories…ties, pocket squares, shirts, cufflinks, belts, loafers. I never pick my jewelry, hairstyle or shoes when I decide on the dress. We’ll save this for another day.

I will say that it took me longer to write this post than it did for him to actually pick out his two suits. Men are so much simpler than women when it comes to formalwear. I wish I could walk into a dress shop, select 2 dresses in 15 minutes and alternate wearing them to 10 formal occasions over the next year. Without ever looking the same.

-The perennial bridesmaid

undergarments

Remember when underwear was fun to wear? As an adult dressing formally, underwear brings a completely different ball game. There are no cute cartoons on your undergarments. They tend to be hideous beige or black and purely functional in order to hide some things and hold other things. They defy gravity.

I always have a difficult time trying to figure out which one I should wear under my bridesmaid gowns. I know that I’m not the only one. I'm not afraid to go there so let’s review our options.

Do you wear the thing that looks like giant biker shorts? You know the one that starts under your bosom and extends down to your knee. It promises to smooth your stomach and thighs but on the way down it crushes your ribs. You have to do a series of squats just to get the thing on. By then you’ve worked up a sweat and your make up is running.

Or do you go with the bathing suit-like one? There are a few variations and cuts. Some are strapless; some have wide straps; some offer multiple straps which just confuse me all together. So you’re basically wearing a bathing suit under a gown, cocktail hour wraps up and, of course, you have to go. Now what? You encounter the same problem on the beach when you have to go. Now add a dress over the bathing suit. There is just no easy way…you miss the salad course figuring out how to handle this situation.

What about the convertible bra thingy? I have one that claims to have the ability to be worn 100 different ways. Oh really? Do all 100 ways actually help the girls out? Doubt it. It looks like a bikini top that has gone through a shredder because there are multiple straps hanging off at all angles. You can clip the straps in wherever you want so they are not visible under different dress cuts. Better hope none of those straps fling off mid-ceremony. I have experienced this and it’s not pretty! It’s actually very awkward and suddenly things are not symmetrical like you planned.

There is another large strap that came with this 100 way bra that I have yet to figure out. It is intended for a low back dress. It is a long wide piece of spandex that is intended to be wrapped around your stomach and then hooked in above somewhere to provide some support. Fabulous. Now I need to put the biker shorts on over that to cover up the lines that this spandex contraption has created. Doubling up on spandex is never good.

Just writing about this is restricting my airflow.

Why do we put ourselves through it? I understand beauty is pain but barely breathing to nip in a few inches is a near death experience. Save your life and free your wobbly bits.

-The perennial bridesmaid

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