Sausage of Honour...

Wow. It's been a long week. I am currently beginning my seventh consecutive day of work. Admittedly, not all of them are full working days, but there's also been the bridesmaid dress drama going on. My friend Tara is marrying her boyf of several years and thank God! For this brings a little hope to my withered and cynical heart. She asked me to be a bridesmaid, which was brave of her because I am much like an elephant in eveningwear. Not that I have avoided paying for this honour. Tara and J. (my partner in bridesmaiding) went to look at dresses and J. chose a couple that would look fabulous on her and like a sack on me. (Go team!) This was done unwittingly, as J. is lovely and would never ask me to wear a sack, even if said sack was all big with the ruching, and gorgeous flowing lines. There's just something about a fishtail skirt that does absolutely nothing for those of us with lardy thighs. (J. is annoyingly lithe and sporty looking - damn her!)

I missed the first dress get together. (I have this whole job at a boarding school thing going on - have I mentioned it?!) But I was all peachy keen for the second with Tara. Despite the fact that I knew that trying on a dress would be hellish. I had to try on this shiny silver number (the actual dress would be midnight blue, but they seemed to have it only in all the ugliest colours). It was quite bad, mostly because it was two sizes too small and I was wearing it with purple ankle socks. Seriously though -What the hell?! In what kind of a shopping experience do you have someone else choose an outfit, then you try it on in completely the wrong size, and then you have to shuffle out 'wearing' the dress, to allow someone else to see you in it? You wouldn't even get to the second step of that sequence of Evil if you were alone! I swear, if I wasn't going through this whole shebang with two friends that I absolutely love and trust, I'd be weeping quietly in a corner.

The second dress was the clincher. It was a swanky dress, actually. In my size and the correct colour would probably be rather nice. However... It was none of these things. In bridal shops, rather than buy off the rack, you have a single dress that everyone tries on and then you order it in your size and colour. In my mind it's the dress equivalent of the shoe shop communal pop sock. Ugh! And then they measure you. (More horror.) Anyhoo, this whole idea was not new to me, I had been there when The Pook's sister was crammed into her 'try on' wedding dress and then she had to order it 3 sizes bigger than she wears everywhere else. Ridiculous. On the biggest day of your life you have to wear an outfit that you reel at the mere thought of the size label.

Meanwhile, back in the bridal shop, we are glancing through the racks for this dress the girls are fond of. We find it. It's stretchy, it's 4 sizes too small, it's brown. I am visibly horrified, but I go into the back room with this communal brown number. Pull the entirely pointless curtain across half of the end of the room. There's a mirror opposite- I can clearly be seen - probably from across the street. I nail my courage to the sticking pole (or post or whatever), disrobe and attempt to get the dress over my head.

Have you ever seen someone making a sausage? Where they stuff the mottled-looking sausagemeat into a bit of skin that looks suspiciously like a condom? That was pretty much what the whole experience closely resembled. Having squeezed in and left the back undone (not through choice...), I took a momentary glance in the mirror and felt a small piece of me die. It clung to every scrap of flab, highlighting any overhang, and making a very big deal of the rather unattractive granny pants I had elected to wear that day. In short, I not only felt, but closely resembled a badly stuffed sausage in purple ankle socks. I'll spare you the experience of going out and showing it to Tara, but I will say two things:

1. Her expression was just phenomenal!! A comination of horror, pity, tactful interest and the overwhelming desire to giggle helplessly.
2. The shop lady thought it would be helpful to stand behind me and hold the back together. It was not.

Eventually all was sorted, we paid our deposit, left and I insisted on having a large drink to recover from all this.

A few weeks passed and I got a call from Tara telling me that the shop has randomly closed, our order has not been put through, there's four weeks until the wedding and we have no bridesmaid dresses. Aaaaaaaaaaargh!! So this week, in between open day, and putting up displays and teaching, we had to go out and find a new dress in the right colour. As I suggested, I could still wear the brown sample dress, but only if the shop lady was free and could walk down the aisle behind me holding it together. Tara was fond of having us wear satin dungarees. Who would forget that?!

Someone must have been smiling down on us because we found some beautiful dresses which I love and make me look like a cake topping and not a badly stuffed sausage at all. J's has arrived and I'm still waiting on mine. Tara and I have both said that we won't be fully relaxed (dress-wise) until we are in the dresses, on the day, outside the church. What can go wrong, will go wrong. Especially if it's anything to do with me. Obviously, I am looking forward to the day, especially the moment when J. and I first see each other in our dresses and I get to say, "DAMN! Now one of us is gonna have to change!" Heheheh. I'm comedy gold I am. Like Les Dawson in a ballgown.