An Imaginary Confrontation

“Do they train you people to be rude?” I was practicing what I would say. For the past few hours, I’d had several conversations in my mind, for every situation I could possibly encounter- only assuming the worst. It felt natural to prepare, considering what I’d been told.

“Don’t go to David’s Bridal,” a friend said. “This saleswoman was so rude to me.”

“Oh… don’t go to David’s Bridal, my wife had a horrible experience there.” That was from a co-worker.

Great. Hours of online searching, hundreds of dresses and the one I loved… the ONE… was of course a dress from David’s Bridal.

Just in case the two people I know personally were exceptions to the bridal experience, I googled “David’s Bridal experience.” You know how some people self-diagnose themselves using the internet and what they initially thought was allergies suddenly turns out to be bird flu because both involve coughing and well, that’s what the internet said. Yeah, it was something like that. There were a lot of people who have posted their opinions about David’s Bridal- hundreds of them. People who obviously have nothing better to do than to get on the internet and share their opinions and complain. Seriously, the only thing more pathetic is spending hours reading those comments, then blogging about them. But, whatever.

So, for every one positive experience, there were seventy-five negative ones. I guess that makes sense though. Most people who have good experiences like to just go on about their joy-filled lives, skipping and smiling. You think skipping isn’t as popular as it used to be, but people still love it- they just need good experiences to bring it out. It’s the bad experiences that fester until we can get online and expunge the demons of our complaints. And that’s where I found myself- online with page after page of bridal horrors. After an hour of reading, I was so worked up, I was suddenly having imaginary conversations with rude saleswomen at David’s Bridal.

Everyone would be so stressed and hurried and tense. I’d walk in and some bridal consultant who thinks she’s an expert on everything about being a woman and being engaged would start telling me what dress she thought I needed to wear and was I going to do something about my hair before the wedding and how I should probably start a skin care routine to improve my complexion and if I would lose ten pounds, the dress would be much more flattering. And this situation became so real that I armed myself with an arsenal of smart remarks, ready to put her in her place, and tell her exactly what she could do with that veil. Or, I would calmly look at her in the midst of her condescending advice giving and simply say, “Simmer down NOW.” Either way.

I woke up the next morning in complete defense mode. I was ready to visit David’s Bridal and I was in no mood to take crap from their bridal consultants. My complaint demons were festering and I was already preparing a blog entry about how I ended up in a cat fight with the consultant, destroyed the store in the process, and was forever banned from the store… and I would be getting married in a second choice gown because the one I loved was ONLY sold at David’s Bridal. That would be my story.

Drama always makes for a better story. Drama OR adding “and then I found twenty dollars” to the end of any story suddenly makes it more interesting. But there was no drama, no evil bridal consultant, and no cat fight. To the contrary, it was a rather pleasant experience. My consultant and I chatted it up in the dressing room. I asked her what it was like to work with all the high-strung emotionally unstable brides and their demanding mothers. She didn’t try to get me in another gown, or tell me what to do with my hair or skin care. She simply got the dress I asked for, helped me in it, and provided accessory choices. In turn, I offered a few suggestions for their store, like providing a martini bar to calm the nerves of all the pushy brides. They should look into that.

So, I tried on the dress I loved and that was it. One dress and I was finished. As I left the store and walked across the parking lot, there was a small part of me that was disappointed by the lack of drama. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have an interesting blog entry about my experience. I was disappointed… that was until I looked down and found twenty dollars. Then, I skipped to the car.