Congrats Doug! / The Dress Mess

Congratulations to my buddy Doug who got married last weekend! Doug is one of my best friends from high school and we've managed to remain friends for the 12 years since high school. God! 12 years. That's almost painful to say. Almost as painful as it was to pluck the grey hairs out of my head this morning. I'm not really sure how long I've been grey. It's only been recently that I've been unable to afford quarterly dye jobs at the salon. On the bright side, I figured out what my natural color is! But I digress....

The wedding was a blast! Definitely one of the best I've been to since...well, my wedding (which, by the way, is an entire post in itself)! Ending up in a hotel room playing drinking games until 3 in the morning is a good night. Ending up in a hotel room playing drinking games until 3 in the morning with your friends that you haven't seen in a while - is a great night! Congratulations Doug and Heidi! You pulled off one hell of a party. Oh yeah...congrats on that whole lifelong spiritual binding thing too!

High School buddies
The gorgeous bride Heidi
The groom and my friend Doug
My gorgeous husband Dan
My other best friend from high school Matt.
Doug, Matt and I have taken this same picture a few times. One at each of our weddings and one at graduation. I can't find any of the other ones!

So we've established that the wedding was off the hook (isn't that what the kids are saying these days?). What we haven't talked about is the nightmare that preparing for the wedding became. Notice the dress I was wearing? Cute huh? It was the dress that almost wasn't (easy boys).

Since Owen was born, I've only been to a handful of events that have required dressing up and I've somehow managed to find an acceptable outfit for them all. For this wedding I had to buy a new dress. None of my pre-baby dresses fit appropriately. Notice I said " didn't fit appropriately" not "didn't fit". I was able to squeeze the dresses over my child-bearing hips and I was able to zip them up. The final result? Think Britney Spears meets Paula Abdul's wardrobe. It was all kinda bulgy and too tight, out of date and just plain inappropriate. It seemed like a no brainer to get a new dress.

Nobody told me, however, that there are no good dresses out there. Even worse, the ones, I would have settled for were not in my size! I went to my staple dress stores: Macy's, JC Penney's, Neimen Marcus (outlet, of course), Marshall's, Jones NY, Ann Taylor. Nothing. Then I venured beyond the safehouses to the Dress Barn, Burlington Coat Factory, TJ Max, New York and CO, Express, Sears, Liz Claiborne, Group USA...anwhere that I thought may sell a dress, I went to. I must have tried on over 100 dresses and was not tempted to buy one of them. Finally, as I'm walking through the mall in tears on the phone with my husband after a 5 hour shopping failure, I see...wait for it....Forever 21. If you are unfamiliar with the store, just revisit the title. Forever 21. Something I thought I wanted to be once, but now conjures images of strobe lights and Apple Pucker. Anyway, I thought "What the hell?". As a last ditch effort, I will see what's going on in the land of early 20's fashion. If you haven't guessed already, by god, I found a dress. From Forever 21. And it fit! I did make a mental note to tell everyone it was an Evan Picone but I suppose I just blew that huh?

OK, so I've got the dress handled the night before the event, now I just need - a tan. I used to go tanning year round before I worried about wrinkles and cancer. OK that's a lie. The only reason I stopped tanning is because I can't find the time anymore, otherwise, I'd be all over it (I look skinnier when I'm tan). Anyway, the day of the wedding, I decide to pick up a self tanner that seemed good. I get it home and realize that it's a lotion that builds a tan over a few days time.
"Oh crap!", I think, "I don't have a few days, I have a few hours!".
So I come up with an idea. I will just apply the lotion 3 times to achieve the tan I would have in 3 days! Brilliant right?! My body won't know the difference, the color will develop in a few hours and I'll bronzed and beautiful by the time they say their I do's. Uuummmm....That's not exactly what happened.
What happened was that over the course of the wedding I ended up 3 distincly different colors. To prove my point, please reference exhibit A


To make things worse. When color started to develop, so did the streaks and all the spots I missed. I had this orange crap all over my hands, and let me tell ya, it was like glue. I looked like a poor mans version of Donatella Versace.
If you are laughing hysterically at me right now, don't worry, I'm not offended. I find it kind of funny myself. There is no real point to this story other than to humiliate myself so enjoy my suffering!