Silk and Lace

I met my closest high school friend while in middle school, and I didn't quite like her at first. There were very few Chinese people in our school system, so when I met her, the first thing she said was, "do you eat chicken feet?"

I said yes, and she got super excited and ran around saying, "see! She eats chicken feet too!" 

I suppose she took that to be an immediate bond, and assumed we were already friends, so when we went to lunch and I didn't save a seat for her, she got angry at me. Though we have very different personalities, the cultural similarities did unite us, and we also have kept in touch throughout the years. 

She recently became engaged, and I will be one of her bridesmaids. I also am supposed to design and make the bridesmaids' dresses, which I am really excited about. There are only three, so it should not be too hard. On this trip to Boston, I was going to go wedding dress shopping with her. 

Wedding preparation is itself an enormous and important cultural phenomenon. I had never been dress shopping before, but apparently you have to make appointments. She made an appointment with David's Bridal, so we could get an idea of the styles that she liked. 

At the bridal shop, the assistant said that we should start by picking four dresses, and then can say what we like or don't like. Usually however, people choose one of the first four, because after the fourth, they all kind of look the same and you can't really see so clearly. 

I realized then that you definitely have to go dress shopping with a second person. There is so much stuff involved, that it's really hard to get into these dresses by yourself. Each dress is actually quite heavy--lined with taffeta, or silk, or lace, or beads, or other trim. My friend's budget is 1000. She said that usually, the dresses under 1000 are really ugly, and thinks perhaps that they do this on purpose to get you to spend more money. I told her that for that price, she should go to China. She could get a round trip air ticket to China, and could get a dress custom made for less than 500, easily. Cheaper still, if you use poorer materials. I remember reading a label for a scarf in China, and it read, "100% silk feeling polyester." 

Of course, nobody wants 100% silk feeling polyester for their wedding, so we started with the designer section and picked out one from there, and three more from the David Bridal collection.

She tried on her first, which was a flurry of zipping and clipping and buttoning. You have to wear a bridal undergarment, which is essentially a corset. "I love it!" She proclaimed. "This is my favorite one!"

"But you've only tried one," I said. 

In the end, I think she tried about 10 dresses, but that was still her favorite. The sales person said I was very good at picking and fitting dresses, and that I should work for them. 

We experimented with veils as well. She almost bought the dress, but then decided to wait and try a few more stores. It is a really beautiful gown, and she looked really pretty in it too.