So the pressure was on. I needed to pick the bustle, and I needed to pick it now.

I mentally processed the fact that I couldn’t see behind me anyway, and this decision would also affect the bridesmaid who would have to bustle the dress. I remembered the time I had to bustle Julie’s wedding dress, which required diagrams, multiple witnesses and participants, plus pencil marks on the dress so you would know that Ribbon A goes through Loop B and so forth.

So I made the snap decision. Ass tack. They could simply tack my train to my ass. “Let’s go with up,” I said. Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure I meant it. I didn’t have time to dwell.

Next the tailor pinned in the top of the dress at the waist and the boobs. The dress shop lady pointed out a pair of beige boob cups lying on the floor. “I got you the bust cups,” she pointed. The tailor shrugged. I tried to gauge the thickness of the cups and wondered if it would matter that she pinned the dress without the cups inside.

“She’s the expert,” I reminded myself. “She’s probably done this a thousand times. She probably pinned the dress and left enough room for the cups.”

Next, I was instructed to stand still so the tailor could pin up the inner-layer hem of my skirt.

“Don’t talk and don’t move,” the dress shop lady said. “She’s going to cut the overlay.”

Have you ever seen the Sex and the City episode where Carrie and one of the girls jokingly try on wedding dresses, and then Carrie breaks out in hives and hyperventilates and starts screaming, “Get this thing off me?”

Well, try standing still in your wedding dress while someone takes a scissors to it. I didn’t move, but holy crap was my brain running wild. The hyperventilating? Almost. Because the “don’t move” caused me to take shallow breaths. Then as the bottom became uneven and she cut more on one side to even it out, I started thinking about the time in college I went to Super Cuts for a trim and came out with my hair a full 6 inches shorter because of the cutting on one side then cutting on the other side to even it out, but cutting too much, and then cutting the other side …

But the tailor is a pro, and she didn’t cut too much, and it will be great. I just didn’t take pleasure in having to wear the dress while she cut it. But being the pro, I can imagine she knows that if she cut the dress on the table instead of with me in it, then it could possibly come out uneven in case I stand funny or have one leg longer then the other or whatever it would be that would make a dress come out more uneven than if say, I sneezed or yawned or hiccupped or [insert involuntary movement like hyperventilating here] while she was cutting it.

And then it was over. I took off the dress and went home. On the ride home, I realized that I was in and out in about 20 minutes. Not bad.

But then the real doubt set in over the bustle.

To Be Continued…

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...

Okay, so baby steps on telling the story of the dress fitting.

I went in there by myself. It’s just a tailor appointment, right? What could I possibly need an entourage for?

When I walked into the bridal shop, I was greeted warmly by one of the owners, who is an awesomely nice lady. “Do you mind if I use the restroom before we get started?” I asked.

She apologized, “Our bathroom isn’t working, do you want to run to the Blah-Mart down the street?”

The what? Down the street? I pictured a gas station bathroom and decided I didn’t need to go that badly. I hoped the appointment wouldn’t take too long, but didn’t have time to dwell as I was immediately ushered to the back dressing room and told to get nekked, but for whatever under-roos I’d bought to try on with the dress, which was, um, yeah. None. So I left my regulars on.

To Be Continued... 

I have my first dress fitting tomorrow. How is it that when a woman has a deadline and a diet, more often than not, she will freak out and eat even more than usual? Thus I am going in there a bit softer than I’d like.

But in the end, it’ll be okay. I’ve been working out and enjoying it, so I figure the rest will follow when it needs to. And maybe by avoiding the whole obsession it will get easier. Or maybe not. But whatever. I can’t think about it right now.

What I am thinking about is the dress fitting itself. I need to remember to bring my wedding shoes with me tomorrow, which are silvery and rhine-stoney and shockingly comfy. I have like 100 pairs of this same shoe, which I found about four years ago, so I just busted out a fresh pair for this occasion. 

Despite the fact that I forked over a $40 fee to have bra cups sewn into the dress, the dress shop ladies told me to buy some kind of under-roos-type contraption to try on with the dress "just in case" but they are just going to have to deal with me, all of me, because when I finally had my one weekend off since like forever, I was not going shopping for some kind of boob-holder that would just annoy me under a wedding dress anyway. The sewed-in cups will just have to do, darn it.

I am ridiculous. I got up early this morning and made a big old chart with some tables at the bottom so that I may gleefully track my fitness progress on my road to the dress fitting. I’m a little less than four weeks away, so I need to be super vigilant about eating clean (isn’t that the new buzzword kids are using these days?) and getting in some super tough workouts every day of the week. Except for one day, during which I let myself recover from the pounding.

I would also like to work in some kind of planned “cheat meal” per week, but maybe that will be just whenever we go out. Since we’re old now. And we never go out. Which is actually kind of fine with me, because we bought the world’s supply of meat on our last grocery shopping trip, so we’ve been cooking fairly often.

Anyway. So the charts. The whole thing-uh-muh-bobber fits on one piece of paper. The big graph is color-coded in pink and green – pink for weight, and green for bodyfat. Right now, they are both moving in the right direction (downwards) so I’m a bit giddy about that. Although my butt hurts. On account of the soreness. From working my glutes silly. Just silly, I tell ya.

And then I have three tables below the graph so that I can chart my measurements (arms, chest, waist, hips, blah blah blah) every week.

Steve is so supremely disturbed by this behavior. He told me I have OCD in two areas. One being this whole charting business. I can’t argue there. The other is with the working out, and spending time thinking about what I’m going to do in my workout, and then working out, and then thinking about the workout afterwards.

Last night, as I was going to sleep, all I could think about is work. It’s my life right now, since the channel is launching on June 4th and so there’s much to be done. I was done thinking about work though, as I was drifting off to sleep, and so I strove to find something else to think about.

I won’t lie. Fond memories of my work out helped me fall asleep.

But soon. Soon I will be able to do pull-ups. And then I’ll feel badass.

And then the channel will launch. And hopefully pull-ups won’t be the greatest thing to happen to me.