I just made my very first call to my very first bridal shop for my very first wedding dress appointment.  And now I need to go grab a paper bag to breathe into because people, even though my appointment isn’t until tomorrow?  I am freaking out.

Freaking. Out.

Here is the thing:  shopping for normal clothes stresses me out (especially trying to find pants that fit but this is not that blog entry).  I do not like dressing rooms.  I do not like trying on a bunch of stuff.  I do not like getting all overheated and sweaty and teary because they turn the heat up to a zillion degrees in those tiny booths and nothing ever effing fits correctly.  Never. Ever.

I am five feet tall and weigh around 95 pounds.  I have a belly that sticks out no matter what I do, a bum that is getting jiggly and I’m starting to develop matronly upper arms (If you could somehow transplant the squishy ness of my upper arms into my breastular area might solve quite a few problems when it comes to finding a wedding dress seeing as how it looks like 95% of them are strapless)  My insides know that they are thirty and are starting to behave that way while my outside still thinks that its twelve and has no idea how to handle the various sagging and bagging that is beginning to happen.   I have yet to find any clothing in the women’s sections of stores that is not too big or too “wow, that looks like it used to be someone’s living room curtain set” (or both).  The petite section seems to be made for people who are wider around than they are tall and shopping in the children’s section is just plain humiliating (nevermind that the clothing in that section is not constructed to accommodate any sort of curve at all).   I flat out refuse to wear anything adorned with Miley Cyrus. Or Dora the Explorer.

Added to that stress, I will be doing this all by myself.

One one level this is comforting: I will be able to look mostly on my own without having to patiently listen to input that might, while well intentioned, will most likely make me stabby and self conscious after a while.  Plus, if I’m going to have an emotional breakdown over my freakish body, it’s better to be able to do so without worrying about somebody having to wait for you to control yourself.   I also think better when I’m by myself.

On another level this is disappointing because isn’t it kind of a rite of passage to go shopping for your wedding dress with your friends/female relatives?  Aren’t you supposed to have someone there to help you convince the sales clerk that no, actually you don’t want to accentuate your butt with a giant bow or to try to talk you into getting the one dress that everybody agrees looks the best but that you would secretly rather use to scrub your floor for reasons you cannot quite explain?  I feel kind of like I’m missing out on something important.

Also? I am not a big fan of dresses.  But I still want to wear a pretty white dress on my wedding day.  But I do not want to spend so much money that I could have resolved a small country’s national debt crisis.  Yarg.

I am probably just reading too much into this and getting too worked up over something that won’t matter much even a few weeks from now but for right now I’m fairly convinced that tomorrow afternoon you will find me sitting in a fitting room bawling to some stranger about how “I hate everything and nothing ever fits and why can’t designers make stuff for people like meeeeeeee?  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”