I'm not a Cupcake.

I'm not. I don't wear makeup, I wear $4.00 pairs of pants, I barely pay attention to my hair (if it's symmetrical, it's good). And I don't really have dreams of a super-princessy wedding dress. If I get out of the house without the skirt tucked in my pantyhose it's a bleeding miracle (Note to Margaret, Christine, Laura and Maribeth... you have to make sure this doesn't happen).

When it came to picking out wedding dresses that appealed to me, I had some trouble. There were lots of this kind of dress (everywhere), and tons of this kind, and it was all too crazy. I even tried this dress on by accident (the sweet girl helping me try things on--with whom I went to high school, as though the experience lacked weirdness--snuck it in the dressing room and dropped it over my head before I could see what it was). This dress kind of weirded me out--as though the model forgot to put the dress on over her long-line bra (which costs $65.00, by the way). There are also the photos of the dresses to deal with, not just the styles. This photo is completely bizarre; is she about to perform a backflip, because that would be awesome. All the models in these pictures are just vamping it up, or have insanely huge hair, or are about to perform acrobatic tricks. It's too much to deal with.

Overall, I had some ideas about pretty dresses that would suit me, but they were all bridesmaid dresses and for some reason, most bridal salons actually looked down their collective nose at me when I asked to try some on. They feigned lack of knowledge about certain style numbers and remarked on my preference for dresses without trains. "Oh, are you having a destination wedding?" they'd ask brightly (destination weddings are usually somewhere with a beach and without all your insane relatives). "No," I'd reply, thinking I'd be nuts to walk across a beach or other tropical flooring in a $600 dress. Seeing they were waiting for more details (because whoever heard of a bride who didn't gush about every detail of her wedding plans to the cranky and unhelpful attendant?), I added, "I just like simpler dresses."

Even better was the attendant who wouldn't let my maid of honor and me try on dresses on the same side of the store (because of the natural animosity between brides and their bridesmaids, I assume), and then AND THEN insulted my friend and tried to pass it off as a joke. Uncool, dude. Uncool.

I also encountered salons that wouldn't let me see the designer/manufacturer and style number of the dresses I was trying on. They supplied their own weird code number. This keeps those sneaky and trecherous brides from price-shopping the dress at another store and finding that it's not really $590 in real life, it just costs that much at the overpriced one-stop wedding shop (if you're in Rockford, IL, take note!). This store also did not allow us to take pictures of ourselves in the dresses. Weird.

I did find some things I liked, though. I tried on and really liked this dress, but will not be getting it because I took pictures of myself in it (because David's Bridal is cool), showed the pictures to my beloved, and he wasn't as keen on it as I thought he would be. Thank gods I showed him the picture--what a crappy thing to find out on my 15th wedding anniversary: "...And I thought your wedding dress was ugly!" or something.

After all the searching, I found a dress I really like. It's simple, but with some pretty details. It's long, but doesn't have a train (though I can add one for very little money!). It fits me much better than the empire-waist dress. It's kinda sexy, but nowhere near whorish. It's a bridesmaid dress, and the lovely attendant I had didn't even bat an eye when I asked to try on the Bmaid styles. She even picked this one out for me. (By the way, her name is Angela and she works at Vera's House of Brides in Rockford) Huzzah! And of course I don't have a picture to show you, because the style isn't up on the manufacturer's website (and I'm not showing you the pictures Amy took of me in it, because my back is surprisingly chubby and it's not a positive thing for me right now).

Right. Now I'm done rambling on (and no pictures to break up the monotonous words! I'm sorry!). No more dress talk. Now I have to think about all the other important stuff, like food and drink. Who wants to help!