Mother of the Bride Dress…it shrank.

I had a wake up call this week.

My daughter Bethany and her hubby Darren got married in May. They had a small wedding in Charleston. (I blogged about it here) Tonight they are having an Atlanta reception for all the friends and family who didn’t come to Charleston. It’s going to be a big party. Loads of fun food: sliders (tiny burgers!)and Mac and Cheese. Peach Cobbler and Banana Pudding. A DJ and dancing. Friends and family…fun, fun and more fun. The wedding party and the parents of the bride and groom have only to wear the clothes they wore to the wedding in Charleston. No worries.

All I have to do as the MOB(Mother of the Bride) is show up in my MOB dress…hummmm… some of you see this coming. Some of you have warned me. Some of you just hush up now.

On Tuesday morning I pulled out my cute JCrew, freshly dry cleaned MOB dress. Slipped it on and then went to zzziiiip it. Shoot. Ziiiiipppp it. REALLY? Zip darn-it…It zipped but let’s just say in order to take a deep breath, I would have to unzip.

I stood there in front of the mirror zombie like  for a full five minutes. Then I unzipped the dress and started muttering to myself. I don’t remember what I said exactly…something like, you have GOT to be kidding me. For the love of pete and all that’s holy how did my dress shrink? I’m suing the dry-cleaner. How dare he shrink my MOB dress …

(This is me on the left and my bud Sharon who just happens to be the Mom-of -the Groom! The dress fit that one day in May.)

Then I called Stephanie. She and Snookums picked me up and we went straight to Macy’s, all the while she’s telling me:

“It’s okay Mom. You hated that dress anyway. We’ll find another one on sale and you’ll like it more. Or you could just buy some Spanx and see if that helps with your zipper on the old dress.”

My eyes narrowed and I gave Stephie my most evil look at the very mention of Spanx. I know some people love Spanx. I am not one of them. I’ve worn them, I tell you, and I won’t go into detail about where they weaseled their way  into for the entire 4 hours that I had them on. I also won’t go into detail about me peeling them off in the fancy powder-room of the reception hall and stuffing them in my tiny evening bag because I was about to have a Petite Mal seizure from all the constriction and shallow breathing.  Anyhoo…

When I got home from Macy’s (sans a new dress) I was dying to tell  Bethany. After all, this was her reception therefore her fault. But she didn’t answer her phone. So I sent up a smoke signal…better known these days as: I wrote on her facebook wall. This is what I wrote:

I have to tell you something…something bad. Something catastrophic. Something hideous. Something that may change everything. EVERYTHING I tell ya. It’s horrific. Call me if you dare.

She called in 60 seconds.  I’m nothing if not manipulative with  my daughters. Don’t feel sorry for them. It works both ways.

I told her about my dress. She said something similar to what Stephie said. “Mom, I bet you can get into the dress. But if not, go on JCrew.com and overnight a new one.” Hummmmmmm.

The next morning at the gym lifting weights with Ruthie,  between her screams of “One more! Come on you can do it!”  I told my evil friend-personal trainer  about my dress situation. I told her what Bethany and Stephanie had the nerve to say.  Ruth put her hand on her hip and squinted and said,” exactly what did you expect them to say”?

I already had an answer to this. I fully expected Bethany to say she would of course cancel the entire reception until which time I could squeeze my ample rear-end back into my MOB dress…

“You ARE kidding, right?” Ruth asked .

“A mother can dream” I said under my breath.

Ruthie and her daughter Kayla went with me after our workout to get another dress. I bought a nice one in a bigger size. It’s brown. I made an inner vow at some point in 2007 that I would NEVER again buy another brown dress as that’s the only color dress I’ve owned since early 1982…oh well.

Apparently the reception will go on and I will be there in a brand new larger MOB dress.

I’ll  be making a few changes in the coming weeks to my stinkin lifestyle.  Baking 3 times a week and ditching the gym is a sure fire formula for increasing your upper inner thighs.

I’ll let you know what I come up with, but it suffices to say it will have something to do with hitting the gym more regularly and cooking a few more healthy dishes. In the mean time I plan on easily zipping up my big new dress tonight, scarfing down a few sliders and dancing the night away jiggling all the while.

All this to say…I’ll be back next week with a new plan. TTFN Peeps. Love and happy weekend!