If the dress fits...

Wedding dress shopping. If you’ve seen Muriel’s Wedding you’d think it would be a joyous occasion with gorgeous, ethereal gowns, gushing sales assistants and the odd glass of festive champagne. But for many brides to be shopping for a dress for their big day is up there with losing a family pet in terms of emotional distress and need for immediate valium and chardonnay inhalation. I know. I was there yesterday. I flew to the rescue of a girl trying on dresses in a Sydney salon – which for legal reasons will remain unnamed. The first sticking point was the sizes. Of which there was only one. A matchstick thin size 10. Now that’s just dandy if you’ve just stepped off the catwalk at Sydney Fashion Week and your last name is Gale. But if you’re a normal size chick [14-16 last time I checked the stats] then size ten is not even going to fit around your pinky finger. So, instead of actually getting into the dress, you just have to hold it up to yourself and imagine what you might look like in front of your hubby to be and 100 of your closet friends and rellos. Right. The second issue is price. A strapless scrap of floaty satin costs roughly the same price at a second hand car…or if you’re going for extra beading... a new Holden Astra. Automatic. With mag wheels. Don’t even get me started on the snooty assistants, the casual put-downs about your wobbly bits and how they will crush them into submission with tulle and boning and how you can’t even take a poloroid of the bloody dress you’ll be forking out your life savings for because it might be ‘copied.’ The whole thing is enough to make you call off the ceremony and flee to Fiji where you can say I do in a loose fitting, tropical print muumuu.
So, my call out today is to all those girls who have been through this wedding dress fiasco, or seen someone who has. Is it time we demanded an end to this madness and started getting hitched in off the rack numbers from Sportsgirl that cost $80? Or is a dress the most important part of the marriage ceremony?
And for the guys – how did you get away with just having to rent a decent suit for the day?