The Chiffon Won

So this past weekend we went to an out of town wedding. Little Miss T. was having a two day sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa and cheerfully shoved us out the door waved us off. The weather was wonderful and the happy couple were excited for their big day.

Mr. Man was in the wedding party and had related wedding duties to attend to, so another guest graciously agreed to drive us from the hotel to the church for the ceremony. I had bought a fantastic dress. This dress was great - it had a flirty little skirt with a chiffon underskirt, the bust was an architectural marvel that gave me the illusion of having cleavage, and best of all it matched my pink vintage pocketbook and my super cute high heeled sandals.

I was ready. Makeup done, hair done, and I had wrestled my way into my suck-everything-in undergarments. The only thing I needed was a hand in getting the zipper all the way up, as I could only reach halfway up my back. So Kyle knocks on the door, and I ask him to do up my zipper.

Disaster strikes. The zipper gets stuck. Fine, just pull it down and try again. Now it is really stuck - it won't go up and it won't go down. Kyle applies some superhuman strength to the task and the zipper promptly breaks off into his hands. So now I am stuck in the dress, half zipped. I send him down to the front desk to ask for safety pins or maybe a paperclip - something, anything that can be used to jimmy the zipper. He comes running back with a handful of safety pins and paperclips and... a shower cap. The person at the front desk had handed him the small box saying it was a sewing kit. Not so much, really. Although in a pinch I suppose wearing the shower cap would distract everyone from the fact that my dress was hanging open in the back.

Nine minutes until the ceremony is due to start and we are both sweating and swearing trying to get this zipper to just move, damn it. Admitting defeat, he uses a safety pin to fasten the top of the dress and I throw a cardigan over the whole mess. We arrive just in time and watch our lovely friends get married, me with a safety pin digging into my back against the wooden church pew.

The reception is being held at the same hotel as we are staying, so I return to my room to struggle with the dress some more. It's not budging. That zipper is stuck. Forever maybe. I can't get it to move at all, not up or down. At this point I admit defeat and decide to wear the dress I wore to the rehearsal dinner the night before. This is when I realize the true extent of my problems - because the zipper is stuck halfway I can't get the dress off. I am trapped in a floral print party dress, now down around my waist and twisted around so the zipper is in the front. I will have to wear the dress forever. I liked the dress a lot but I didn't expect to be buried in it.

I take a deep breath, grab a pair of scissors, and cut the zipper out of the dress. (I may have then crumpled it in a ball, dropped it on the floor and kicked it across the room, but no one would blame me, right?) Exhausted and sweating from my ordeal I take a shower and put on the other dress.

The rest of the night went well without any new dress incidents, although I did discover that when dancing to the wedding classic "YMCA" in a strapless dress, the less endowed of us must content ourselves with lowercase letters.