I ordered the bridesmaid dresses yesterday. It was a chaotic and worrying experience.
My bridal shop sells prom dresses too, so the place was overrun by sixteen-year-old girls trying on amazing pageant gowns (my favorite of which was bright yellow with bold silver sequin appliques and the Stephanie Seymour hemline). The receptionists were frantically trying to reschedule a girl missing her appointment because of a surprise hospitalization for sometime between now and May 14th. [Yes, they are all booked up between March 30th and May 14th. My fitting, scheduled in January, is on May 15th.] Any lingering regrets I might have had about not going to prom dissipated.
We found an unoccupied corner to look over the size chart for the bridesmaid dress I’d picked out. I have three bridesmaids, and if you asked me yesterday I would have guessed that they are all about a size 6 (Claudia is really more like a size zero, but she just gave birth a month ago). But if I had followed the dressmaker’s size chart, I would have ordered a size 4, a size 10, and a size 14. To be fair, the US Standard size chart, even though it is not the same, produces the same result if you go by the largest measurement for each woman.
Ultimately I ordered a size 6, 10, and 12. And I’m guessing everyone will need their dress taken in in at least one place. Claudia is obviously the biggest X factor here because who knows what happens to a breastfeeding first-time-mom’s body in the four months after delivery. Becky’s will allegedly fit in the waist and hip but I’ll believe that when she tells me herself. Carrie, paradoxically, had to insist they size hers up one, and she might have to pay to have that undone.
This has all served as a reminder why traditional bridesmaid dresses are so frowned upon in the wedding blog community. Although looking at even the standard chart, it seems like I should have much more trouble buying regular old dresses that fit given I’m a size 10 in the bust, a size 4 in the waist and a size 6 in the hips. Maybe vanity sizing has truly run amok, or maybe none of my dresses actually fit.