My sister also knows what she wants, so she contacts the nearest shop that carries this particular designer of MOTB (Mother-of-the-Bride) dresses. She makes an appointment, is assigned a consultant over the phone, and excitedly makes plans to visit the shop eighty miles away, a shop which conveniently is located a half-mile from my house.
When we go into the shop, an old fixture in this town, we are immediately ignored. The consultant never materializes, but an elderly woman does. No one seems to know what we're talking about, nor is anyone willing to move from the computer at the register. No one except Nana.
Mamere is not very helpful. Her one helpful suggestion is to try on a glitzy, feather-encrusted long gown that is exactly NOT the color my sister is looking for. "Pewter," my sister explains, showing a picture of the dress she thought she was coming to see, "like a silver or gray."
"This one is gray ... a little ..." explains Granny, attempting to hang the dress on a hook. The dress clearly weighs more than Aunt Bee does and is most probably straining what is left of the woman's back muscles. This dress is a nude-shade underneath with a smoky black overlay, giving my sister the appearance of being naked in a fog storm while holding green and aqua disco chickens that are molting. Oh, SHE looks fabulous; the DRESS, not so much.Finally, my niece, daughter, and I start pulling dresses for my sister, since Aunt Clara certainly isn't going to do it, and Lead Butt is still sitting at the computer, completely disinterested in the fact that my sister, a concert soloist, has money to spend on this dress. As a matter of fact, she could also be shopping for concert attire, for all these women know, but no one ... NO ONE ... bothers to ask.
While my sister is madly trying on things we throw in at her, we decide to have some fun and start moving dresses around from rack to rack and size to size. We happen across an orange and black tiger number that looks like Lawrence Streetwalker wear, and we top it off with a black feather jacket. We take a raspberry-colored alien dress, hand it through the curtain, and tell my sister, "Try and find the head and arm hole, we dare you!"
What pains me is that this is an "upscale" store. Their customer service is bullshit, and their dress selection rivals the Salvation Army -- lots of old crepe from the seventies, sequins/crystals too heavy to hold up, and hooker wear. With the small selection and the lack of attention to people spending money, I'm quite shocked that they're still in business.
As if anyone at the register cares, which they don't, we leave. Eighty miles here, eighty miles home, eighty-year-old sales woman, and eighty minutes of ignorance by the staff at the bridal shop. Amazing. I wonder if they realize the magnitude of the sale they could have made (plus the others from the family), but, obviously, they don't care. Keep it up, ladies, because when the rent comes due, you'll wonder why you don't have the sales receipts to back it up.
