I watched dozens of bridal gown shows, where hundreds of gowns blended together until I just didn’t care anymore. Instead, I slowly desensitized myself to the issue. I was too scared of my mother’s wrath if I bought a new gown. The DJ was perfect, the photographer was brilliant, the flowers would be lovely, and I would feel terrible in an awful, evil dress. My maid of honor generously offered to help me pay for a new dress because she could see my devastation. I went alone to another bridal store to look at different sample gowns. (He said it looked pretty, and that I would be beautiful-what a keeper.) I considered buying a new dress (knowing my mother would kill me for wasting her money). Months later I snuck my fiancx into my old bedroom and presented the dress hanging in the closet to see if it would help me feel better. I cried about the whole debacle, desperate for a solution, some way to comfort myself that this dress was okay. Above all, it certainly did not make me feel beautiful. It was purchased out of fear, at a time of insecurity and weakness. It wasn’t long before I began to truly hate it. The final straw was when my mother gave me a stern look implying, “You will never find anything as nice for less.” With the swipe of her credit card, the dress was gently placed in the back of my car and we went to my parents’ house to drop it off. It didn’t look like much to me, but I felt so defeated in that store and the consultant pushed me to finish the sale. She helped me into a $2000 gown marked down to less than $500. I frantically looked up their website on my phone to show her the sample sales that were clearly advertised and she pulled out exactly one dress.

However, upon our arrival our consultant belittled me for my meager budget, was very short with us, and only after I insisted that they did, in fact, have dresses that ranged between $500 and $800, demand that I tell her which dresses they were. It was the third store my mom and I would go to that weekend, and I was on a bridal high. I found a bridal boutique nearby that regularly sold sample dresses, called ahead asking if I could schedule an appointment to only try on the sample dresses (I could), and did just that. Most of David’s dresses, unfortunately, made me break out in hives due to my dermatographia, and the ones that didn’t were too simple for both my mother and myself, so I stalked the Internet looking for designer gowns to be bought on the cheap because they were “out of style.” I know all about David’s Bridal and sample sales. And all for the price of $800 or less (leaving $200 for alterations within the $1000 dress budget). A dress that would make me look radiant, feel beautiful, and bring the congregation to tears when they saw me enter. Of course, I’d need a gorgeous, earth-shattering dress. Years later when we bought the ring together, the stress of the perfect wedding began, and I immediately grew concerned about the details: the party, the flowers, and the dress. This was it, this was the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Once my boyfriend and I finally got together after years of skirting the issue, we knew we were going to marry each other. It is astounding how wise I was when I was six, and how lost in the details I became once I began planning a wedding. How would he look? Who would he be? The most exciting thing about getting married was figuring out who I’d be married to. The doors would open, everyone would stand, and there he would be across the aisle. Unlike the stereotype, the biggest thing in my mind wasn’t the party, or the flowers, or the dress I always wanted to know what the face of my groom looked like. Growing up, I daydreamed about my future wedding (when I was old enough to have one).

Radiant bride sample sale