Finding the perfect dress.

A huge part of my stress and anxiety, besides venue, was our outfits.

We went for our outfit selection two weeks ago, and no one could’ve expected (except me — but I’ll explain later) that I’d leave the boutique feeling…

…INCREDIBLY UPSET!

FM’s dresses, as gorgeous as they were, just weren’t ME.

Now I kind of expected this since I’d stalked their facebook page enough to know that their house style wasn’t quite what I had in mind. For instance, I’d always wanted to wear the classic songket, but I knew their style was more lacy. I had also established very early into my research that I’d have to tailor-make my evening dress because I knew I was going to have a hard time finding more covered-up options in their collection. What I had in mind for this was more red carpet glam than fairytale princessy. In all fairness I already had specific visions of what I wanted, so it made the selection all the more difficult. And my vision was this: a non-white, non-lace and non-poofy sheath dress (hand me the best shapewear please — I’ll need it) that covers my shoulders and upper arms. Non-lace because I don’t want to have to wear an opaque bodysuit underneath the lace just to cover-up because that would just look awful, unless you’re going to be wearing a hijab with it.

I knew there were going to be limitations. Yet I still took the plunge because I adore FM’s make-up. I just had to pray that somehow something will magically appear for me.

But unfortunately, as far as our first visit proved, no magic was conjured. I reserved the outfits I tried on, but believe me, I was not at all happy with my picks.

I had two options: settle, or tailor-make an extra outfit (this was going to be either the nikah dress or the songket — I can’t afford both), on top of the evening dress that I already knew from the beginning I had to tailor-make.

By now I think it’s pretty darn obvious how much I hate the idea of settling, but I did seriously consider going down that path because I didn’t want to spend any more money. Faz was already giving me grief, saying I was “spiralling out of control“.

It annoys me to no end when I excitedly tell him an idea and he immediately kills it, responding with “How much?”. I was merely telling him we ought to just make an appointment with Fatimah herself to discuss the dresses, but he was already starting to give me grief about the costs. What are you talking about? We don’t even know how much it’s going to cost, and that’s precisely what the appointment is for. I think I’m fairly reasonable — if it’s beyond what we’d be willing to pay, I’d decline. But what if it’s actually affordable and we missed the opportunity just because we thought it was more expensive and didn’t bother to find out?

Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen to me, so we made that darned appointment.

I obviously know cost is important, but couldn’t he have been a little more empathetic, try to see it from my perspective first, then get to the cost part later? I mean, it’s the saddest thing when everything else is in place except the dress on your own body — and you’re the bride!

So I took half-day leave yesterday, and we went down to the boutique for the second time. The difference this time was that I left the boutique ALL SMILES, WAY OVER THE MOON.

Alhamdulillah God granted me my (paltry — yes, I realise) wishes because Kak Fatimah brought out a couple of new dresses we hadn’t seen during our first visit, and I fell in love with them instantly!

So there — I’ve got my nikah and songket outfits settled, and as per status quo, I’ll only be tailoring my evening dress. No extra money spent!

As we were leaving the boutique, Faz remarked that this “trial” was a blessing in disguise so that we could come again and be met by these gorgeous new dresses. I can’t agree more, but also the moral of this story is to:

LISTEN TO YOUR WIFE!

I’m using this phrase a lot these days in place of “I told you so“. It’s become sort of a joke now, because he recently realised after almost ten years — would you believe it — that I actually give useful advice! Geez.

Anyway, after that we made a long-awaited trip down to Iris Tailor to make his medium grey three-piece suit. He kept putting it off at one time because he wanted to “tunggu second or third week bulan puasa ah, mana tahu dah slim sikit“. Err, not sure that was actually the case yesterday when they took his measurements, but we’re very excited to see how his suit’ll turn out because we’ve seen a lot of good reviews about this Iris Tailor!

Since this huge chunk of my worries are solved now, I’m feeling sooo much better, and ready to take on other tasks!

Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. Ya Allah, please let things pan out even better.