My love-hate relationship with bridesmaiding

Well! Blogging today from Herryn's house in Knoxville, while she's still asleep. We had a busy busy weekend of wedding planning stuff, which was mostly fun. The only not fun part? Trying on bridesmaids dresses. Holy crap.

I remember when I got married all those long years ago, I was wearing about a size 12 when I had to pick out my wedding dress. These dress shops have a single sample of each dress, which is generally a size 8, 10, or 12. The kicker is that the sizes are not the same as the sizes of the clothes you wear every day - they run about 2 sizes smaller (or the clothes you wear every day run two sizes bigger). So the samples are really size 4, 6, 0r 8. At the wedding dress time, I could get the dresses on my body but could not possibly even dream of zipping them up. So I had to picture what the dress would look like if it fit me, which was not always easy.

Cut to this weekend, where I have become a big fat bastard and I currently wear a size 16. Which is bad enough, but now those samples are 4-6 sizes too small, instead of 2-4. Holy crap. Many of them I couldn't even get over my hips. The ones that I could do were no way going to come even close to closing over my uh.. ample bosom. So jeez. Poor old Herryn is trying to glean any useful information from these ridiculous attempts to try things on, which clearly is getting her nowhere. So that was great! A whole day of being 20 sizes too big! I really don't understand why these places can't have two samples, one is a smaller size and one in a larger size. Even though I know I'm on the heavier side right now, but I'm pretty sure that statistically the "average American woman" is a size 12 or 14. I'm not asking for the sample to fit me perfectly, but it would be helpful if I could at least get it ON.

Then we went to David's bridal, which, although a complete and total madhouse, works differently. They have many sizes of every dress, and the sizes match up to what you wear normally. So that was nice. I would try on things that were my size or close to it (or even larger!) and we could actually tell what they looked like. The biggest challenge I think is going to be finding something that will look reasonable on me and another bridesmaid (both of us, even if I were at my thinnest, are super busty) and on the MOH who is very petite and small. Complicating things further is that there is the potential for at least one pregnant bridesmaid by the time this thing rolls around. You would think they would make a reasonable number of maternity bridesmaid dresses, but you'd be wrong. There are a few, but not many. And not like maternity versions of another dress - they're generally totally different.

Now I've really got to get back into the weight loss in earnest. You will recall that I was planning on starting back on WW, but that was back in November right before my brother died. Obviously I got a little off track after that. I am pleased to say that I haven't gained anything additional since then (even with that, and the holidays, and everything) which is good because it seemed to be piling on pretty steadily in the year leading up to that. I may try to go back soon.

Finally, it has been fun going around K-ville with Herryn, who is a TV reporter. Some people totally seem to recognize her and thats amusing to watch. I remember seeing local TV reporters around my neighborhood in Cleveland and you'd look at them like - don't I know you? Did we go to school together or something?

Ok, everyone's up now (including her dog who is practically trying to maul me) so I better go.