Free How I Planned Your Wedding by Susan Wiggs

out to shake my hand I noticed a small but beautiful solitaire engagement ring on her finger. “I’m Bridget,” she said.
    I immediately liked her. I looked around to see if someone was playing a joke on me—she really was the non-French version of the snob from the first store. My mom and Molly smiled at each other, knowing how serendipitous this was. It seemed like a sign.
    I resolved to keep an open mind—even though the entitled bride-devil on my shoulder kept whispering sweet nothings in my ear aboutexpansive dressing rooms and Oscar de la Renta gowns. I calmed myself down by promising to make an appointment with Saks immediately if the dresses here were lame.
    I told Bridget that I wanted the biggest dress she had. She congratulated me on my engagement and asked me a couple of questions about the wedding, my dress budget, my style and, most importantly—what my fiancé wanted me to wear. “Obviously, he doesn’t get the final say,” she giggled, “but you want your future husband to love the dress almost as much as you do, right?”
    She had a point. On the runway earlier that day, Dave’s opinion had been the last thing on my mind as I fretted over price tags and imaginary pockets of fat on my arms.
    “He always tells me I’m his very own Disney princess,” I said. (Um…and Dear Readers, if you ever meet Dave don’t mention that to him—he’ll tell you he only likes The Lion King and Tarzan, Disney’s more manly selections.)
    Bridget grinned. “I have the perfect dress for you.”
    She turned on the heel of her canvas sneaker and prepared to dive back into the mass of dresses crowded along the far wall of the store.
    “Wait!” I said, just as she heaved a row of hangers off to the side. “Is this…this perfect dress …under a thousand bucks?”
    “Of course!” she said. “Honestly, we don’t carry that many gowns over your budget.”
    I heard my mom’s audible sigh of relief at this, but the greedy devil appeared again on my shoulder, hissing, “How can a cheap dress look anywhere near as good as the one you had on this morning?” I had to admit to myself that the gown this morning had set the bar pretty high—and it had also set a reference point on price. I could feel myself anchoring on $12,000 as a figure that indicated a level of beauty and quality that less expensive dresses simply lacked. Then I caught Molly’s eye as she helpfully held aside a pile of chiffon so Bridget could unearth the dress she had in mind for me.
    Molly’s gorgeous wedding gown, the raw silk number that made herlook like a blond Audrey Hepburn, had been inexpensive—and it had all the bridal bells and whistles, including subtle crystal detailing at the waist, intricate ruching on the bodice and beautiful tailoring that would hold up a few decades from now for her own daughter’s wedding.
    I brushed aside the selfish devil on my shoulder and stepped into my teeny dressing room. Bridget appeared a moment later, arms full of glittering tulle.
    “Most girls don’t even want to try on this dress because it’s such a ball gown,” she said, panting from the effort of carrying it. “But for a girl who has Prince Charming waiting for her at the altar, this is The One.”
    She plopped the dress on the ground, skirt first, and it stayed standing like a mountain of bridey-ness. She unzipped the bodice (I reminded myself it was okay to have a bodice with a zipper instead of buttons or ribbons) and asked me to step in. I closed my eyes and took the plunge—literally. I misjudged how much fabric I had to step over to get into the dress and found myself clawing at the cloth walls of the dressing room, trying to keep my balance without shoving my grundies into Bridget’s face. She reached out, grabbed my hand and guided me to the patch of floor buried beneath the layers of ivory netting.
    As she zipped me up, I kept my eyes on the floor. I didn’t want to see myself until I was standing with my mom and