The Elusive Dress

Yesterday, my two best women and I traveled to Roosevelt Field Mall to explore its nooks and crannies and find dresses for them. Arthur and I want our colors for the wedding to be peridot and garnet (the colors of our birthstones). At first, as you may have read before, we were more or less going to let the best women and best men wear whatever they felt comfortable in. This is still very important to us, but we may try to have the women in one color and the men wear ties in the other color. First, though, we need to find the dresses.

After planning this day months ago, we were all anxious to get out there and start shopping. So we made the logical first stop. The food court, of course! Hey. There were free samples. And, well, one needs sustenance in order to walk around the mall for hours. Don't judge!

Anyway, after a quick lunch and discussion over day before wedding activities (J found a great reflexology place in LI and we no plan to make appointments), we were off.

We went to Bloomingdales, Macy's, Nordstrom's, JC Penny, Ann Taylor, J. Crew and Jessica McClintock. This list is neither in order nor complete.

When we walked into our first store, we noticed that pea soup green is quite in and we all mocked it, as women do when they shop. We moved on to to try to find clover greens, grass greens, seafoam greens or apple greens. Need more green references? Click here. Nothing was wowing us. There were sun dresses and "maxi" dresses and formal gowns, but there seemed to be a dearth of cute green cocktail dresses in most of the stores.

Then J found a dress that looked very good on her. Guess what color it was? Pea soup green! She bought it! The next challenge was to find a dress that complimented it for S. Do you know how hard it is to find a dress that does not clash with pea soup green? You don't know. It's pretty freakin' hard.


Meanwhile, we stepped into Jessica McClintock for kicks and trips down prom memory lane. It turned out that they had a dress with both green and garnet! It was really funky and when J handed it to me, I laughed at first and joked that I should be in Moulin Rouge. I tried it on, it fit and looked good. It was also 25% off. I bought it for the rehearsal dinner. Note: that is not at all settled and I was a bit worried about wearing such an ensemble to Rib City. I mean is it weird to wear a fancy cocktail dress to a place that has a carton character display of the animal you about to eat? My best women convinced me that my concerns were unwarranted, that it was just about the only time I could wear something like that and I got over it. It is now safely ensconced at J's place so that Arthur cannot see it. Did you know the tradition is that it is bad luck for the groom to see the rehearsal dinner dress before the rehearsal?

Anyway, we left the mall feeling slightly unsatisfied in regards to our original quest. We had to make this past shopping date about two months ago because of everyone's schedule, so I fear it will take just as long to do it again. In the mean time, there will be lots of on-line shopping.