mother of the bride

We got to Kamloops Friday afternoon, after the Kelowna leg of our trip, with the intent of helping Sonia with wedding plans. Up till now I’ve felt a little out of things. After all, the wedding is happening three hours’ drive from where we live, and since Sonia does event planning as part of her job, she seems to have it well in hand.

One of the first things she did was show us her invitations. My she’s gone to a lot of work - designing, printing, embossing, tying and trimming with ribbon. It suddenly hit me again how much work a wedding is, just considering all the hours she’s spent on those alone! (Each invitation has the name of the recipient printed on it - for starters.)

After dinner at a so-so Italian restaurant, we picked up Kate (Sonia’s bridesmaid) and went back to our motel room to put some more hours of work on those babies. I stuffed them into envelopes (making sure the name on the invite and on the envelope were the same - I hope I didn’t goof up anywhere!), then put in all the inserts - the info about Kamloops for out-of-town guests, the reply card and another card telling which stores they’re registered in for wedding gifts. Meanwhile Sonia and Kate were ribboning more invitation covers and centers together, and even Ernie got into the action by licking envelopes and putting on gold stickers.

Saturday morning we went dress shopping. This was something I’d been worried about - as a friend of mine told me these dresses usually have to be ordered in, can take months to arrive, and this puts a lot of stress on things. With Sonia’s wedding set for the end of May - we don’t have a lot of months.

Sonia had scouted out the wedding shops in town - or at least one of them. She’d tried on dresses one day with two of her friends along...and found the one. It sounded lovely when she described it on the phone - until it came to the price tag! So Saturday we were going to check out the other wedding shop(s).

At the first place we were met by a sign which told us to take off our shoes (the temple of the garment world after all!). Then it was digging through the racks to find prospective dresses. Efficient shop lady soon had half a dozen collected for us in the change room.

I went into the change room with Sonia. She showed me how to make a tunnel with my arms through the bodice and then she found my opening from the other end, by groping through trains and crinolines. All in all, it worked pretty well.

There were all types and if I knew my fabrics, I would be able to write about how they were organza, or satin or taffeta or brocade. I know this - they were all pretty, and all expensive, and all not quite right, at least not when compared to the dress. When one seemed particularly close, the shop lady got a sly look in her eye and threw out the info that she could give us 25% off - because it would be bought off the floor (not literally of course). When I quizzed her about this, it turns out that any dress bought ‘off the floor’ was discounted - but not all by 25%. It depended entirely on how long the dress had been hanging around. The older it was, the bigger the discount.

We soon exhausted the supply of dresses there, and then it was on ... "Let’s go see if my dress is still there," Sonia suggested. So it was down the street to the shop she’d been in a few days earlier (Rosa's) and straight to the row of dresses. The dress was still there (whew) and she put it on... Oooh and aaah and how wonderful it made her feel, and see how it was almost a perfect fit? I could tell by the look in her eyes and the plead in her voice that it would be nigh impossible to persuade her to forsake this wonderful dress and keep looking. (And could I get a discount? Ah yes, but one that was ever so small - as this dress had not been around long at all!) So pushover mom that I am, I gave in to the only bride daughter I’ll ever have and consented to a dress which cost about as much as my first car, but made my little girl’s day and will ensure she’s as pretty a princess bride as you’ll ever see.

We did other wedding things Saturday too. After breaking the news of the dress to her father, who had holed himself up in the library while we did the dress shops, we checked the fabric stores in town for bridesmaid dress fabric (she’s chosen a taupey pink color) in taffeta, which none of them had. So I’ve come from home with a swatch of pink bridal satin in my pocket and a mission to find that color in taffeta in one of the local stores. I also need to make about 40 dozen squares for the reception.

After this weekend I definitely feel like the mother of the bride!