So. I went dress shopping again this weekend. Again for the first time since Christmas, that is. Yay?

I didn’t find anything I really liked, but I learned an important lesson: things you like on the hanger you won’t always like on your bod. I realize I am the first person to ever figure this out, so I’m sharing that here. You can thank me with an Amazon gift card.

I’ve never been good at fabrics. The most my mother taught me about fabrics is that you are supposed to wash like colors.** I grew up on Mervyn’s and JC Penny’s clearance sale clothes; poorly-constructed poly-cotton blends were all my closet ever knew. So this whole dress-shopping thing has been like trying to speak a new language. I’ve been teaching myself to pay attention to cut, fit, and style. I’ve been learning the difference between chiffon, taffeta, and shantung. I’ve been driving sales assistants nutty with my faltering attempts to articulate what I want.***

Through all of this I’m beginning to realize that the dress hunt is largely an intellectual process. You research looks. You try on styles. You scratch options off the list and add others. This goes entirely against the emotional myth we’ve been fed about wedding dress shopping. You know what I’m talking about. You go to a store, you try on a dress. Maybe it’s your first dress or maybe it’s your 24th. None of that matters now, because you know. You just know. And as you gaze into the mirror your face crumples, but you’re grinning through the tears as you whisper to yourself, “This is the dress I’m going to get married in.”

Listen. If your experience was like this, glory and power be to you, because that’s an important thing to cross off the list — not to mention a cute story. But I’ve gradually come to realize that I will probably not have a “Say Yes” moment like the above. And I suspect a lot of other brides won’t, either. This is like the elephant in the wedding room that nobody talks about.

I’m going to guess that if you’re anything like me, you do a lot of thinking before making a big purchase. We read reviews. Analyze specs. Compare prices. We gather all the information and weigh it before making a final decision. Yet we’re just supposed to know which dress to buy? Like the magical dress fairy comes and taps you on the head with her wand and that’s it, that’s your dress? Style and circumstance and budget be damned? That doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’m going to call B.S. on that.

A sales associate at one of the shops I went to last weekend made a telling comment: “You know, I’m surprised at the number of brides who come in, try on a dress, go (mimics staring expressionless into the mirror), and say, OK, I’ll take it.” Maybe these women had already done a lot of looking around. Maybe the process was rational for them, and not emotional. Maybe we all won’t love love love love love our dresses like the brides on TV do.

That’s OK.

I will find a dress I like. I will be excited to wear it on my wedding day. But the choice I make will probably come down to which fabric feels better, which color I like better, and (most importantly) which has the lowest price point — not to which dress I’ve formed an intense emotional bond. Is there any romance to a dress decision like that? No. But there’s a lot of practicality.

At this point practicality is good enough for me.

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* Do you like how I lamely ripped off the opening line of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address here? Because I do.

** Sage advice I willfully ignore. Just dump everything in at once and use cold, I say.

*** “I’m looking for, um, something that’s, you know. Not shiny. Or something.”