Dress Shopping The Fishie Way

Here's how deciding to go dress shopping went...

 

Tuesday afternoon I recieved an email from a local bridal shoppe about a sale they're having on Sunday. After one quick email and a few texts to fabulous madre Fishie, we'd decided to go together. I started to think about it and decided maybe I'd better ask sista fish, and the fish maids if they'd be available to go with too. Well, sista fish had plans, one fish maid lives 3 hours away, and the other was going to come until she needed to have a root canal. (I gave her a pass on coming after I heard about that) So it was just madre Fishie and me.

That was it...no month long planning and coordinating schedules, no setting appointments at 5 different bridal stores, just a laid-back "come if you can" type of vibe. So laid back in fact, I promptly forgot about it by Wednesday and didn't remember until Sunday around 8am (which was great since we were supposed to meet up at 10am) at which time I promptly got dressed and asked Fishboy (FI Fishie) if he wanted to go with and take pictures. Which, like any good Fishboy,he agreed to do. All it cost me was buying him lunch, but the pictures he took were priceless. So, without further ado I present "Dress Shopping The Fishie Way" complete with narrations by who else? But the Fishie Bride herself... (Oh and please excuse my poor excuse for personal appearance I mean I literally rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and went out the door. Plus I left my cami on while trying on dresses since there wasn't any real "dressing" rooms and as much as I love madre Fishie I wasn't too comfortable with getting down to my skivies in front of her.)

Poor madre Fishie had to get up at the crack of dawn to make it over to the sale, she was in desperate need of some tea to try and wake up.

After scouting out the racks, found a dress to try on. It definately wasn't "the dress" but it was still pretty. And that's when the thoughts started creeping into my head...you know the ones I'm talking about, the ones you think about but in reality you probably shouldn't say because they never come out the way you meant it.

"It has too many poofies, I don't want big poofies I want baby poofies" to which madre Fishie reminded me that "the poofies can be removed"

"This is why I'm the president & CEO of the itty bitty boobie committee"

*by the way, this is a size 10 dress and I wear a size 2 jeans. I hate freaking dress designer sizes, I haven't been in the double digits since I was in middle school and this made me feel like a fat little adolescent all over again, not a good feeling mmmkay?*

 

Ah yes, the "detachable train". So we found, what we thought was a "detachable train" in the bottom of a dress bag (this is why I'm the Fish Out of Water bride, I mean who's ever really heard of a detachable train?) and promptly safety pinned it to my butt. Here's the thought process going on in this picture: "I think this is where it goes, and it looks good there"

That is, until someone who actually knew what was going on came over and madre Fishie got brave and actually asked the lady what it was...

 "Ohh...so THAT'S where it goes, and now I look like I have a tumor in my hip" which of course elicited the "It's not a tumor" quote from Kindergarten Cop to come into my brain...complete with a really bad Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.

"I think I like it better back on my butt, I don't wanna look like I have something growing out of my hip, it's already too big"

 The racks at the sale were none too impressive, I was expecting like racks upon racks of dresses maybe I've seen too many reruns of Say Yes To The Dress but only 3 racks of dresses was disappointing.

"I know I said I wanted a mermaid dress, but this may be getting a little too literal" *make note of the fact that my chest in no way fills out the dress, the consultants frequently reminded me of this fact and my eventual need of a Wonderbra*

Poor madre Fishie spent the time: helping me in and out of dresses, fixing my train, telling me that I didn't need a wonderbra, and that the dress sizes probably shouldn't have sizes since I'm too skinny as it is. Can you tell why I love this woman?

At the end of it all, I walked out of there dress-less. There were a couple of major contenders but after treating madre Fishie and Fishboy to lunch I decided that for the amount of work madre Fishie would have put in (she offered to do alterations on my dress) for the prices they wanted and the fact that I didn't get that "OMG, this is THE dress" feeling, the dresses just weren't worth it and I have plenty of time to keep looking.

Did you buy your dress on the first trip? Or did you wait, and go back and find THE dress?