Imagine if you found your dream wedding dress, only $2,000 too expensive. Then imagine, through a website, finding a girl in Canada selling the dress at the right price. Then imagine that you decide to try it on one more time before sending $1800 CND via wire transfer and wind up finding a local store selling the dress in the sample size. You put the dress on, they clip you in, you put on the veil and it is perfect.

So you spend the next nine months on this self-satisfied cloud, certain you’ve found the dress that dreams are made of. Your seamstress is wonderful, and you have every confidence that she can take the dress from a ten to a two with no problem at all. She pins you in, you schedule the last fitting, and you don’t think about it any more.

Now imagine you’re at that final fitting.

And the dress won’t zip.

I kind of want to leave it there for all the sympathy comments, but I won’t. She’d sewn an extra bust cup in, effectively adding an inch of padding to my ribcage. Once she removed the extra bra, the dress fit. It fit snugly, which is to say it’s actually so tight that I’m not sure anyone will have the balls to zip it up the day of the wedding, but it fit.

But it looks…. plain. It looks wholly unspectacular.

When I tried it on as a ten, the fabric fell differently, it seemed like you could throw a crinoline under the skirt and be done with it, awash in ivory satiny skirtiness. But the seamstress had to take SO MUCH fabric out of the dress that the line doesn’t flow the same way any more, there’s no room for a crinoline, and I have this flat-pancake ass and my bustle looks like vanilla cream soda. Which may sound OK and all, but I don’t care for vanilla cream soda. And I don’t think I have a pancake ass.

I wanted to look fabulous, but last night i felt like I was just wearing a very expensive nightgown.

I am so incredibly disappointed.