Sunday, April 15, 2007

Last Sunday was Easter, and with Easter comes the great ordeal that girls face: shopping for the dress. The Easter dress is a significant purchase each spring…one that brings its share of annoyances and the thrill of success when the right dress is finally located. From the very first Easter, when an eight pound baby wears a dress whose frills weigh ten pounds…clear up into adulthood, the all important find of “the dress” spurs on a shopping extravaganza like no other.

Some people go on Easter egg hunts. I go on Easter dress hunts. My own hunt this year was one filled with frustration. For that reason, I’d like to share with you what I so lovingly call “The Great Easter Dress Hunt of 2007.”

1. Slim Pickins. I try valiantly to watch enough E! fashion shows and What Not to Wear to have a basic grasp on what is in and what is out. But somewhere I missed the memo that the dress is out. With the exception of one store (the store where I at long, long last made my purchase), the sum total of actual dress options at any given store did not exceed four dresses. I love a good set of separates…don’t get me wrong. But the Easter dress should be…a dress. I learned that had I been bigger, shorter, a junior, or a kid, my options of actual dresses would have increased by about 20%. But in the good old department where I shop – very few options.

2. Style. I understand that I’m not any sort of trend setter. And I have come to grips with my taste in clothing being roughly a season behind the going styles. But the styles of the few dresses I did find were borderline heinous. There were several that looked like they had come straight from wardrobe on I Love Lucy. I’m sorry to be a pain, but I do not want to wear to church a collared, belted dress that Lucy would have worn while doing laundry for Ricky and Little Ricky! Nor do I want to sport a dress with no waist (leaving me to look like a giant roll of printed toilet paper) or an empire waist (leaving me to explain that I’m really not pregnant).

3. Material. Again…I don’t mean to be difficult to get along with, but this clingy stuff has got to go. The spandex-esque shirts – and worse, the dresses! – hang to each and every roll and dimple. You know, I’m working on my weight (reducing it, that is) and I’m making significant progress. But never, ever in my life, short of one day having my own personal trainer, will I be in good enough shape to manage a dress that clings. I do not want to be the girl that sits in the second row of an Easter service and has 250 people behind her saying, “Does she know how that sticks to her?” YES, YES SHE KNOWS! BUT SHE COULDN’T FIND ANYTHING ELSE TO BUY!

4. Color. An Easter dress should be…springy. At least I think so. I like for my Easter dress to have lovely shades of pastels…pinks and lavenders and yellows. I like it to be gently subtle and soothing to the eye. Let me just tell you – such a dress does not exist this year. (Unless of course, I wanted to be any size other than the one I am.) This year it was HELLO red. HELLO brown. HELLO navy blue. HELLO black. Hello…can I have pastels? Why can’t they make that adorable 2T dress about 50 times bigger so I can squeeze into it?

5. Print. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about print. It’s spring…have I said that? Where are the flowers and wisps? The soft, soothing petals and posies of the season? This year it was all polka dots and paisleys and wild takes on strange chains. I didn’t particularly want to walk into church looking like I just crawled down from someone’s living room window or I recently departed a 1970’s couch!

6. Price. I am the world’s cheapest clothing shopper. Nothing makes me happier than a dress (still sporting the tags) for 75 cents at a yard sale. As a result, shopping in a normal store sends me into a bit of price shock. And of course, it would be too much to ask for me to gravitate toward the cheapest dress on the rack. No, no. If the prices range from $29.99 to $99.99, you can believe that every tag I turn over is going to be $99.99. One store I entered had a dress cute enough to make me overlook the print (polka dots) and the color (brown) – but once I grabbed the tag and saw $118 printed on it, I just turned on my heel and left the store. If I’m paying $118 for a dress, it had better be white and come with a groom at the other end of a long aisle.

7. Math. Shopping is supposed to be a soothing, relaxing event in my life. I want to walk into a store, find a dress, decide I like it, and look at the price…end of story. But no. Every single dress was a marathon math session in my head! Original price - $70. Take off 10% because it’s Easter. Take off another 8.5% because I’m shopping in this particular 2 hour window. There’s a $10 reduction at the register if I pick up the coupon directly beside the register, and another 15% off if I’ll just answer these five simple questions as part of a store-wide survey. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! Just charge me the stupid forty bucks to begin with and forget all the brain strain!

So, after shopping in six stores and two cities over a period of three days, I finally settled on an Easter dress. It was a red and white sundress that met the only requirement I had left by that time: it zipped. I was so fed up with shopping that I would have been tempted to take out a second mortgage to pay for the stupid thing just to be done. It wasn’t my typical Easter dress, but it was…a dress.

Of course then there was a whole new set of problems:

1. Shoes. I didn’t own any red shoes. Time to go shoe shopping. This is hard for a girl like me who hates wedge heels and peek-a-boo toes…are there any other styles out there? I found one strappy red pair of heels at WalMart and bought them – without even trying them on. I willed them to fit.

2. Purse. I didn’t own a red purse. WalMart to the rescue again. Of course the purse isn’t big enough to hold all my junk, but it sure is cute!

3. Sweater. Did I mention it was something in the neighborhood of twenty below zero on Easter? And I was wearing a knee length sundress and strappy heels? (Okay so maybe that was a slight exaggeration on the temp – but not much.) For only five dollars less than I paid for the dress, I could have purchased a lovely white cardigan. Of course 90% of the time, I’m too hot, so when would I ever wear a cardigan again? I called up my friend Lynette. She has lots of clothes. I just knew she’d have something I could borrow. And she did.

So Easter was a success after all…even though I was exhausted by the time I was done shopping. I took an online survey for the store this week – and when they asked why I decided to make my purchase there, I clicked “other” and wrote in desperation.