Nurse, more suction please!

The recent drama over my plane ticket almost made me forgot about the ORIGINAL wedding drama – that of DRESS! The story is too good to leave unfinished, so here is the final (I hope) chapter in the saga of being a suitably clad bridesmaid.

Some weeks after the initial meeting with the Dressmaker, she called back to let me know that she’d like me to come in for a fitting. I was instructed to bring along the undergarments I would be wearing. Shopaholic had been raving about this supposedly miracle control underwear – that Oprah herself wore – and persuaded me to buy a pair. $50 later, I found myself wondering if this honestly did what the salesgirl, Shopaholic and of course Oprah said it would do – take whole inches off your waistline and in other places. And if so, why on earth aren’t more people talking about this?

I got to the Dressmaker’s and there it was – THE DRESS! In all its beautiful purple Maid of Honorish splendor and glory.

Dressmaker snapped me out of my reverie and shooed me off into the washroom to change my underclothes. As I pulled the Spanx underwear out of the package a glimmer of doubt rose up. I held up the garment. It was – and I exaggerate not – the size of a bikini bottom. Kate Moss’s bikini bottom. Ah, well. Here goes nothing I though. I stepped into the left leg and then stretching the top I stepped into the right.

*WHAM*. My knees snapped together with the force of the elastic and over I went. I grabbed on to the first thing that made contact with my desperately flailing hand. That happened to be the shower curtain! Down I went with a resounding crash, knock kneed with Spanx underwear around my ankles and Dressmaker’s shower curtain and rod over my head.

Silence.

Then, scurrying feet and an anxious tap on the door and Dressmaker voice (in a very high register) asking if everything was ok?

I move gingerly. My head hurts from where I slammed it against the wall. My shoulder is sore as I have probably wrenched it. And my knees are still bound together by the seemingly super-elastic on the underwear.

I struggle to my feet and reassure Dressmaker that I am still alive (I can’t say the same for her curtain rod). Once upright, I brace myself and start to pull up the underpants. Slowly, painfully and with much grunting I get the panties up as high as I can. By now, I’m sweating profusely and I’m so hot that the mirror is fogging up.

I finally get out of the washroom to find anxious Dressmaker waiting in the hall. She peers past me to survey the damage. I’m trying to maintain my dignity here, but it is quite hard to do wearing nothing but a bra and control underwear. “I’m so very sorry,” I say. “I’ll pay for the damage.” Dressmaker smiles. “Honey, don’t you fret over that ugly mess of a shower curtain. I’ve been trying to get my husband to redo the washroom for YEARS. Now he’ll have to! You’ve just gone and done what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.”

Well !

Dressmaker ushers me into the fitting room and chats away like nothing is more common that having someone wreck your washroom while trying on underwear. I’m too flabbergast to speak (yup, there’s a new scenario for those who know me) and meekly follow her directions re getting the dress on. As I’m about to step into the dress, she stops me. Stepping onto her little dressmaker stool, she reaches down and firmly grasps the sides of the underwear that are sitting just under my bust line and YANKS. I can’t but help let out a gasp as suddenly everything shifts and magically I have a waist!
Somehow the underwear has redistributed my fat so that I now have all the curves possible, but sans the fat rolls! Amazing! WHERE all the lard has gone, I’m not sure. But it sure is well hidden. So mesmerized am I that I have to be reminded to put my dress on, and when I do – whoa, I’m so impressed! The pattern makes all of my sins (and I have a lot of those) vanish and leaves me with all of the “good bits”.

As I twirled around the room in delight, I realized that I was finally at the end of this saga that began a distant 8 months ago. Although I will miss my daily prayer of, “Please Lord, deliver me from this evil” I am so happy to know that at last, I am a card carrying member of the Club of the Suitably Clad!

Amen.