Word of this post: silly

I woke up early Saturday morning so I could go to a small bridal boutique that had been recommended to me by several people. From what these friends had told me, it sounded like a really great place to go for a variety of nice dresses. I was interested to see the selection a boutique would offer.

I had scheduled an appointment for 9:30 a.m., which is when the store opened. A few other girls were there waiting for the store to open when I arrived. I was the only one by myself. When we walked into the store, a saleswoman asked me my name. She identified herself as the person assigned to help me. "I have one more appointment coming in, too," she said.

Just then, a girl walked in the door and looked right at the woman who was to help me. She was the other appointment. She told the saleswoman that she wanted to try on her favorite dresses from the last time she was in the shop. The saleswoman said she'd go get the girl's card, and then she looked at me. "Do you want to try on straight dresses or full dresses?"

"Yes," I answered. "Both."

The saleswoman pointed toward a small rack loaded with dresses. "Those are the straight dresses, and the full ones are back there." She walked to the back of the store.

I started looking through the straight dresses. They were crammed onto a fairly small rack, so I had to push the heavy dresses aside one at a time to try to get a good look at them. They seemed to be organized by designer, which meant nothing to me. I didn't know which ones came with sleeve options or what my color choices were. My arms were still a bit sore from my last workout, and as I struggled to move dress after dress aside so I could look at the selection, I realized I didn't even feel like trying on dresses.

I felt silly to be looking for a wedding dress when I'm already married.

K and I knew it would work out this way -- having two weddings -- and I was OK with it originally. We had paid for half our Dallas reception before we ever realized we'd have to have the Florida wedding because K was deploying. We told everyone we talked to about the Florida ceremony that we'd have our "real" wedding once K got back from Iraq. That was always the plan. It's why we chose to make the Florida ceremony so simple.

The thing is, though, that weekend was perfect. I feel like we're just asking for trouble if we think we can have a second wedding go so smoothly and wonderfully. And it feels silly to be having a wedding again. Maybe if our first one had been smaller -- like if it was just the two of us at a justice of the peace or something -- it wouldn't feel so weird to be planning another. (But I still wouldn't want to change a thing about the Florida wedding.)

The saleswoman came back after I'd been looking at the dresses for a couple minutes. "Have you found anything?" she asked me.

"No, I don't really know what I'm looking for," I half-lied. The thing was, I realized I was looking for the two dresses I've already found. Plus, I'm afraid I've seen one too many episodes of Say Yes to the Dress, so I was expecting a similar experience: I wanted to walk into the store and have a salesperson devoted to helping me for a short time. I wanted the person to ask me what my budget was for the dress and to ask what style(s) I was looking for. I wanted the salesperson to help me.

The woman motioned me over to the couture dresses, saying I could start out there if I'd like.
"Is this kind of a help-yourself-type thing?" I asked. The woman nodded. "OK, because I have no idea what I'm doing here," I said, which wasn't a lie. I didn't want to waste my time looking at dresses that were way over my budget. It was the saleswoman's job to know her inventory and to be able to point me in the right direction.

I had heard her tell someone else in the store that the appointments each lasted an hour and a half. If the saleswoman wasn't helping me find a dress, what was she supposed to do in all that time? And if she wasn't going to help me find a dress, why did I even schedule an appointment?

The saleswoman chose to ignore my obvious desire for help, and she turned without saying a word and headed to the back of the store again. I returned to the straight dresses, but I was frustrated. I'd gotten more help at Dav!d's Bridal! If I was going to be spending hundreds of dollars on a dress, I wanted help, and I wasn't going to get it at this boutique.

There was also the fact that all the dresses were the exact same size, which was a few sizes too big for me. If I even found a dress I liked, they'd have to clip the back to the point the dress would just look odd. I'd have to use my imagination, and for a dress that important, I didn't want to be blindly ordering and having to guess what the dress would actually look like in the correct size.

So I left the store. As I walked past the front counter, I considered telling the woman standing behind it that I was abandoning my appointment. Since no one seemed to care about helping me, though, I figured they wouldn't care about my leaving either, so I didn't say a word. The woman didn't look up as I walked past her.

My whole experience in the store was probably 10 to 15 minutes. Still, I could have slept in! I could've skipped the drive to the store, which is in a different part of Dallas than where I live. I could have done so many different things with the beginning of my weekend.

As I drove back home, I fought off tears. I was just frustrated about the whole situation. I would be fine with leaving things with the Florida wedding. I can't get into planning a wedding again, and I don't want to have to try to explain to people why I'm planning a wedding if I'm already married.

Forty-two people went to Florida for our wedding. All 42 traveled a good distance by plane or car, and all 42 stayed in the hotel. All of those people spent a lot of money to spend that weekend with us. I can't ask them to do that again, much less ask another 100 to 150 people to join us this time to watch us reenact something that already happened.

It feels silly scheduling appointments under my married name. I can't help but wonder if the people I'm scheduling with think to themselves, "Wow. Good thing she's getting rid of that impossible last name!" (Little do they know ...)

I don't want to put my friends through listening to me talk about planning a wedding again, and I don't even want to make you all read about it a second time. Not that it's a bad thing to hear or read about, but I just can't help but think to myself that it's silly to be doing it over again.

Regardless, though, we're having the Dallas wedding. Which means I have to plan it. Luckily, since it's still just under 15 months away, I have some more time to get over my reluctance about the planning.

At least through all my hesitation about wedding No. 2, this weekend did give me one certainty: I have absolutely no second thoughts about writing off that stupid bridal boutique for good!