Perseverance.

After I proposed to my wife she went a little crazy, some might say she was crazy to accept but that's a different post, and started reading bridal magazines and tearing out pictures and putting them in a binder.  From what I've noticed since then this is a very normal practice.

Pretty much what she did was get three or four different pictures of something then we would narrow it down to one.  After all, there can be only one.  She did this with bridal and grooms cakes, wedding rings, invitations, flowers, dresses, some other stuff that I kind of blurred on.  

What I really remember was the wedding dress ordeal.  Everything else she had options, she saw this dress and fell in love with it.  No other options in her binder.  That dress or naked was heard at one time.  That might have been me though.  That designer didn't have any dealers in the DFW area and her closest dealer was in Houston.  Money was pretty tight so we couldn't just drive down to check out a dress.  

We go a bridal shop and see if they have a knock off or something close.  We show the sales lady the picture and tell her that it's only in Houston.  What store she asks.  We tell her and she tells us she's from Houston and she knows that shop.  The dress would go for about $10,000.  I love my wife more than I can express but that's not going to happen.  We look at other dresses and my wife just can't find anything else.  

We leave empty handed and figure we'll do more checking around on the web and other local stores.  Still nothing that even comes close.  What the hell, let's call this place and see if it's really $10,000.  I call and from the lady that answered the phone and the background noise I assume that the dress isn't going to sell for five digits.  

I tell the identifying stuff for the dress and she tells me it's $229 plus an extra $29 for the shawl.  I repeat the numbers to make sure I heard correctly.  I look at my wife and I think she's stopped breathing.  I heard right.  I tell her that we're up in Dallas and we could drive down on my next day off.  The angel on the phone tells me to go to a good alteration shop and tell them we need measurements for a wedding dress, fax the numbers to the shop and they'll FedEx the finished dress to us in a week or so.  

We go to a alterations place that we've used before and since and tell them what we need.  I'm a guy and I've been fitted for a custom suit before but that's completely different than getting a wedding dress apparently.  This alterations lady is measuring here and there whilst I'm writing everything down.  I didn't know what the numbers were, I just know that the shoulders and every part of the shoulders had a tape measure against or around them numerous times.  I fax the numbers to the shop along with my credit card information.  

I get a call from my wife about a week later where she tells me that her dress came in and it fits perfectly.  Getting that dress was all about perseverance and a little luck.  Lucky because that designer was pretty new when we were married, now her dresses do go for the four and five digit area.  She's still beautiful in it.