The dress shop lady helped me step into the dress and I held it over my boobs as she zipped up the back. Then she whipped open the heavy curtain of the dressing room with a flourish.

The tailor, a small foreigner, immediately scurried inside and got on the floor at my feet. She began pulling to even out the bottom of the dress, which was way too long in all directions. I glanced in the mirror and realized the thing was on a little sideways, and the tailor and I tugged in opposite directions for a moment while I turned the dress around on my body until it was centered in the front. I imagined for a moment that the dress had gotten tailored in the sideways fashion and felt glad I caught that.

Then the tailor grabbed the bottom of the train and flipped it and held the end of the dress up to my butt. “The bustle,” she said. “Up or down?”

I strained to look behind me. “Um, I’m not sure?” I didn’t know what she was asking.

The dress shop lady said, “You have to decide for the reception if you want the bustle to be up like that, on the outside of the dress, or if we bustle it lower on the inside.” She turned to the tailor and said, “Show her the inside bustle.”

The tailor kept her grip on the train and moved it from my rear end to somewhere bunched up behind my knees. It gave the dress a sort of Southern belle rufflely look. My initial instinct was to think, “Oh, I’m not really the Southern belle type.” But it looked pretty, and like the dress was meant to be that way, as opposed to simply tacking the train to my ass. Although the ass tack was a simple solution, and I tend to like simple solutions.

I didn’t have more than a few seconds to deliberate before the tailor said, “Up …” she moved the dress back to position one, “Or down.” She moved the dress back to rufflely position two. "Up?" She moved it back to my butt and said, "I like this way better. The fabric drapes nicely."

One vote for the Butt Cover.

I looked helplessly at the dress shop owner and said, “I don’t know, which do you think looks better?”

She said sternly, “Which do you think looks better.”

Picking the way my dress is supposed to look for the duration of my wedding day? By myself? Split-second decision? Me, a Libra, astrological sign that is the symbol for “I can’t make a decision” has to make this choice, now, by myself, straining to look behind me in the mirror with no one on my team with a clear view to offer an opinion. Radically altering the appearance of your wedding dress when you can’t see what you’re doing  is not in the handbook under Things You Have to Do at Your First Fitting.

Or maybe it is. I never read the manual.

The tailor did the Up or Down routine again, never letting me get used to one idea over the other.

I said, “Well, it’s kind of hard to see behind me…”

The dress shop lady said, “You need to be comfortable with your decision because this is how people are going to see you all night at your reception. This is really how they are going to interact with you and remember the dress, so…”

To Be Continued...