Dressing the Party: Round 2

A few weeks after Round 1, I went to a fancy bridal salon hoping to see some of the Alfred Angelo and Alfred Sung dresses I'd been looking at online. As soon as we got there, I felt uncomfortable and out of place but I just chalked it up to lack of familiarity with this kind of store. Oh, if only I'd been aware of the 2.5 star rating on Yelp perhaps I would've moderated my expectations a bit. 

logo via Yelp

You remember me talking about how principled I am when it comes to dress shopping, yeah? Well let's just say that a huge store with only twelve "plus-size" (meaning larger than 14) bridesmaid dress options and a consultant who refused to acknowledge the store's limited plus-size inventory (until I brought it up), was honestly just never going to work for me.  Thus I learned that one needs to call and ask about these things before you you just show up for an appointment.

image via cbcastro's Flickr page

I'm not proud of it, but I'll admit that I was feeling pretty 'over it' from very early on. My Party Person shopping pal was wonderfully cheerful and optimistic to counteract my Eeyore-esque attitude, though. You'll notice that there aren't dress pictures to accompany this post, and that's because there really wasn't much worth remembering. We tried on all of four dresses, I think.  The consultant kept telling us that if we picked a dress online she would happily order it for us so we could buy it from that store, but for me the point of going to a store is so that you can try things on before you buy them.  Usually I'm all about shopping online, but my indecision over dress styles means I have this crazy need to actually see everything in person.  And in any event, if I were going to order them sight unseen, there's a more-than-decent chance that I'd stand on principle and order them from a store that carried a wider selection of plus-size samples. 

image by HerbFellow via deviantART

This negative bridal salon experience seriously made me want to crawl into a little bride cave and just disappear for a while, and it certainly did nothing to increase my excitement about wedding gown shopping.  But Party Person N encouraged me to get back on the horse, and she was right.  That same night I serendipitously happened to find out that Alfred Angelo apparently had these "signature stores" where they carried all their styles in the full range of sizes. And luckily for me, there was a signature store relatively close by.  Since I knew they offered a gray color called charcoal, I was feeling kinda hopeful that one trip to this signature store would result in me finally making a decision about these dresses.  So... I got back on the horse. 

If you were ever surprised (and not in a good way) by something that happened at a bridal salon, were you able to get over it or did you choose to move on to a different store?