Free That Wedding by Jillian Dodd Page A

lowers her voice and says to the coordinator, "She just got engaged. It's her first time."
    "Yes, it is. Please be gentle with me." I turn back to Katie. "Seriously, how did you do it?"
    "Just pick some colors, find your dress, and the rest will all fall into place. I promise."
    Although I secretly hated the dresses we wore for her wedding, I'm now sorta applauding the fact that she had the courage to even chose one.
    She touches my hand and says quietly, "This probably isn't the best time to tell you, but I don't know if Eric and I are going to make it."
    "Make it to the wedding? But I haven't even set a date yet."
    "I mean, make it. Our marriage. I'm not, we're not......I'm not sure. We fight a lot. I just don't know if it's going to last."
    "Oh, Katie!" I hug her. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?"
    "Yeah, this stays between us, but Neil and I have gotten close again. He's really been helping me."
    "Neil's been helping you? Katie, he's had a crush on you since the eighth grade. He's not the person you should be getting marital advice from."
    "I'm not. We're just friends. I mean there's sparks, but we just go to lunch. Talk. He listens to me."
    "They always listen when they want in your pants. And that's a direct quote from YOU! Do you remember telling me that, when I was telling you that Jake wasn't really a jerk because he listened to me?"
    She giggles. "I do remember that! God, he was a jerk."
    Lisa skips back to where we're sitting and pulls me off the couch. She says in a perky voice, "Okay, we're ready for you to start trying on! I'm so excited you asked us to help you pick out your dress!"
    Katie rolls her eyes at me from behind Lisa.
    "I'm not sure I'll find a dress today, but everyone tells me I need to start planning."
    "Have you set a date?" Katie asks.
    "Not yet," I sorta lie. Not really though since we haven't picked an exact date.
    Katie was right. The first dress Lisa has me try on is a huge pouffy hoop-skirted ball gown. This dress looks like something designed by Cinderella, Barbie, and Lady Gaga while they were sitting around getting high on mushrooms, or crack, or whatever drug makes you hallucinate. Not that those people would partake in those activities, but if they did, I'm thinking this is the dress that would be born from it. I have never seen so much satin, tulle, lace, glitter, sequins, and fabric roses, all in one place.
    I look ridiculous.
    You know those bobble head dolls, with the big heads and the little bodies? I look like a bobble head in reverse. A teeny head on top of a big huge body. I walk out to the middle of the store to give the girls a good laugh.
    Katie smiles as Lisa screeches, "OH MY GOD! That's THE most GORGEOUS dress I have EVER seen! Don't you just love it?"
    Could she possibly be serious? It looks like a bedazzler threw up on me.
    "Uh, it's quite gorgeous, but I'm not sure this dress is like the one," I say.
    She disagrees. "I know it's the first one you've tried on, but oh, JJ, that's got to be your dress. It looks amazing on you. Turn around. I'm dying to see the back of it better."
    As I'm trying to turn myself around in this dress, which I'm pretty sure is like trying to maneuver a Hummer into a Mini Cooper-sized parallel parking space, the skirt hits a decorative column with a vase sitting on top of it. The whole thing topples over. If it weren't for Katie's quick reflexes, the vase would've hit Lisa in the head and probably killed her.
    Which probably would have put a damper on the occasion.

    Needless to say, three hours, and God knows how many Cinderella gowns later, I'm a bridal dress failure.
    As in I have no direction, no idea what I want, and no idea when I'm going to figure it out.
    I call Phillip and tell him that it's imperative that he meet me at Hooters. I need some hot wings, beer, and Monday Night Football to erase the trauma of this afternoon.
    Danny texts me.
     
     
Danny :)  Heard you were dress shopping. How'd that go?
Me:  Not so well. But it was my first