I am not what anyone would call a fashion plate. Fashion costs money, so basically I’m agin’ it. Education, travel, mortgage reduction, yep, they are legitimate expenses. Fashion not so much. But with a wedding on the horizon, only a fool would stand between his wife and her need for a gown for the occasion, and my mother didn’t raise no fools.

So here we are off on just about every other weekend looking for wedding gowns. And let me tell you, it has not been easy! First off, there is no such thing as a ‘mother-of-the-bride’ dress. I don’t know what they wear, but they don’t make any dresses for them. The sweet little girls in the wedding shops all look at you with their eyes wide as if they are going to cry because they have no idea what you are talking about, and they hate to disappoint a customer over here. So we have stopped asking. Instead we ask, ‘do you have any evening gowns?’ Well of course they do, dozens of them in all sorts of colours and fabrics, from Chinese and Indian traditional outfits, to classic Western gowns; a truly dizzying array of choice in style.

However there is no choice when it comes to size. Everything we have looked at is a size 2. Now there was a time when Pam was a size 2, but that was many years and several kids ago. Pam is not overweight by any stretch, but neither is she Asian. Everyone over here is a size 2; young, old and in-between, all the women are size 2. That is how the dress shops can get away with carrying just one size. If you are no longer a size 2, then you have a seamstress to make your clothes. It is all very simple, very cut-and-dried, and impossible to get around. So we have given up looking.

                                                        

Instead we have gone looking on the internet. I don’t know why we didn’t just start there, it would have been a whole lot easier on my feet. Pam, with help from her sister-in-law Syl, found some excellent options.  So now the plan is to print off the pictures (yeah I guess you could say that is a kind of plagiarism, you got me there), buy the fabric locally and find a first-rate seamstress to make the dress to fit. Any of our local readers know of a good seamstress?  The beauty of that is that she can then chose the colour and adjust the designs as needed.

Local or not you are all invited to weigh in on your choice. No prizes for the winner, and Pam is not bound by your choice – she IS the mother-of-the-bride, after all – but it would be kind of fun to see what you think. Personally I would like to see Pam wear something Asian. It is where we now live, and there are some gorgeous saris out there, but I know I am going to lose that argument, and that is fine. What am I going to wear? I think my daughter would like me to wear something really shiny, I’m not sure why, so I am looking for that. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.