Chapter 37
Juliana
“Juliana, are you excited?” Merrin nudges my side with her elbow. I am wedged between Merrin and my mother while Mrs. Michaels drives us with my grandmother in the passenger seat.
“Well, I still don’t know what we’re doing... Sooo…” I trail off and hope one of them will fill me in on what the appointment is. No one finishes my sentence so we ride the rest of the way to the appointment with Mrs. Michaels leading the conversation. I answer politely whenever directly addressed but for the most part, I stay quiet.
Merrin and my mother block most of the windows so I can’t see where we’re going. Eventually, we pull up to a curb, Mrs. Michaels parallel parks effortlessly and we all pile out of the car.
“Ta-da!” Mrs. Michaels gestures excitedly and grandly at the store in front of us. I look up and see white lace dresses lining the windows. My eyes dart up to the name above the door. Beautiful Bride. A bridal shop. My heart starts beating faster. Before I can say anything the door to the shop flies open and Tatyana bursts out onto the sidewalk in front of us.
“Oh, thank god,” I say under my breath and move forward to greet her. I shoot her a look as she grabs me in a hug.
“What the hell is going on?” Tatyana whispers.
“I was just about to ask you that!” I whisper back, she pulls back and gives me a similar look I gave her a few seconds earlier.
“We booked a wedding dress appointment!” Mrs. Michaels cheers and looks so excited, that I feel guilt creeping up inside of me.
“Wasn’t that nice of Mrs. Michaels?” My mother asks, pushing me to speak so I don’t come off as rude for not responding right away.
“Yes, thank you. That was very thoughtful of you.”
“I know it’s pretty soon and I asked your mother who else to invite but we figured to keep the group small, just family and your best friend, Tatyana.” Mrs. Michaels gestures to Tatyana, her smile growing as she beams with pride at her idea.
“No, of course, this is great. Thank you.” I step forward and give her a big hug. “Thank you,” I say again, softly and offer her a smile.
“Of course! Anything for my future daughter-in-law!” Mrs. Michaels says those words and I have to keep myself from physically reacting. I look over at Tatyana and she senses my need to be rescued before someone notices my restrained reaction.
“Should we get inside? I’m sure they have other appointments after us, we wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.” Tatyana speaks up and opens the door to the shop for us while gesturing for the group to move inside. All of the ladies file in with Tatyana and I bringing up the rear.
“Thank you,” I whisper to her as I enter the shop. “I don’t know how I would have survived this without you here.”
“We don’t know if you’ll survive it even with me here.” Tatyana comments as we follow the rest of the group further into the shop. “Who knows if I’ll survive either!”
“Wow, thank you for the support.” I narrow my eyes at Tatyana, not amused with her response, even if I agree with her.
“I don’t know how much help I’ll be. I guess we should just try to enjoy it.” Tatyana gives me a look and I know she feels almost as guilty as I do for this whole situation. “Just maybe don’t fall in love with any of the dresses. Oh! I will help you pick out the worst dresses and hopefully, your mom and Kurt’s mom and everyone won’t like them either, and then if we are lucky we can escape this appointment without choosing a dress.” I nod in agreement. It’s not a terrible idea but hopefully, our ideas for the worst dresses are the same as theirs.
We make our way to join the rest of the group and I can feel my nerves getting worse. I wasn’t expecting them to take it this far, especially so soon. I should call Kurt and tell him. I need to talk to him, I have no idea what to do here. I am about to excuse myself to use the restroom and call Kurt but Merrin reaches her hand out before I can speak.
“Okay, hand over the cell phones, ladies,” Merrin says and wiggles her fingers at me. I look at her hand then over at Tatyana and around at the group. Everyone else begins digging through their purses or pockets to retrieve their cell phones. “Come on, bride. Hand it over. We can’t have anyone interrupting or giving away the surprise if we find the dress or dresses.”
“Dresses?” I ask as I reluctantly hand over my phone. Tatyana groans and puts up a bit of a fight but Merrin is persistent and eventually, Tatyana hands it over.
“Yes, dresses. Of course, we are here to find your wedding dress, Juliana but they also sell bridesmaid dresses here. I thought it would be fun to look at those as well!” Merrin beams happily at me then her smile drops and she looks a bit embarrassed. “ Oh wow, sorry it’s not that I’m assuming I will be a bridesmaid, I just thought with Tatyana here we could have her try on dresses and I can too if you want, and then you can see different styles on different people and how they would look together.” Merrin grows quiet and the room is quiet too. I realize everyone is watching me and waiting for my reaction but I’ve hardly had time to process what is currently happening so it takes me a few minutes to understand what Merrin just said to me.
“Oh!” I say when my brain finally catches up. “Oh no, it’s okay. Of course, I want you to be a bridesmaid, Merrin. You are Kurt’s only sister but you’ve also always been sweet to me. That sounds great and I’m sure Tatyana would love to try on a dress as well.” I look over at Tatyana and give her a smile, kind of an evil smile. She narrows her eyes at me but puts on a smile for the group.
“Sounds awesome,” Tatyana mutters through her teeth and the group smiles happily. Mrs. Michaels gives me another hug and then hugs Merrin and Tatyana. I can tell she is very excited.
“This is so great! Thank you so much for having me as a bridesmaid!” Merrin pulls me into a big hug and squeezes me a bit before pulling back. “Okay! Let’s look at bridal gowns first!”
“Of course!” Mrs. Michaels grabs the attention of one of the ladies working and they come over to greet us and tell us we are free to wander around for a few minutes to see if anything catches our eyes, seeing as how I don’t have a particular style in mind. Everyone spreads out in the store and I stick close to Tatyana.
“See any that look hideous?” I whisper to Tatyana and we both giggle.
“You girls having fun?” Mrs. Micheals calls out to us, hearing us giggle.
“Yes, so much,” Tatyana responds and pulls me to the back of the store where there are racks of dresses on sale. Some from brides who returned the dresses including custom-made dresses that were returned as well. Tatyana and I shift through them and we come across a very puffy, off-white ballgown-style bridal dress with sparkles throughout the entirety of it.
“Oh no,” I say with a grimace on my face.
“Oh yes.” Tatyana pulls the hanger off the rack. “Oh, but we must. We have to.” Tatyana smiles at the dress and brings it over to the slowly growing wall of dresses everyone wants me to try on. I groan but keep looking through the sales rack.
“Should we find nonwhite dresses? Or is that too much?” I trail my fingers over a mermaid-style dress that happens to be gray. I don’t think I’d look good in a mermaid-style dress and both of our families are pretty traditional so gray might be a deal-breaker for everyone.
“Oooh, yes! That is horrible! And you hate mermaid style.” Tatyana comes over to admire my pick and nods her head in approval.
“I think my mom does too so hopefully she’ll express her opinions on this. She’s been rather quiet about this whole thing recently which is definitely not like her.” I add the gray dress to the rack.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Maybe she’s growing up.” Tatyana comments and I chuckle a little. We go back to searching the sales rack and the racks nearby. We only find one more dress before Gram comes back to join us.
“Hey, Gram,” I say as we shift through the racks.
“Hi, girls,” Gram smiles at us then focuses her attention on me. “Are you ready to start trying on dresses? I think we may have picked out way too many so we should probably get started.”
“Oh, okay yeah.” I look over at Tatyana but let Gram lead me back to the part of the shop that has a changing room and big mirrors. The rest of the group has already taken their seats in the little half-circle in front of the changing room. Tatyana takes a seat next to Merrin and gives me a thumbs-up. The shop worker, or stylist, comes over to me with the first dress and leads me into the dressing room so she can help me put it on.
The first dress is not one of the ones Tatyana or I picked out but it’s also not my style so I’m not worried about it. The stylist helps me get into it and she ties up the corset-like back then she waits for my nod before pulling open the curtain of the dressing room. I step out of the dressing room and take the stylist’s hand to step up onto the little platform in front of the mirrors. I look at myself in the mirror and wait for reactions. It doesn’t look horrible but not great either.
“Well,” Mrs. Michaels starts, “you look beautiful, of course, but I don’t think that’s the one.” A few people across the couch agree and I see Tatyana in the mirror smirking. I shoot her a glance and she bites her lip.
“I think we can all agree this one is a miss. Should we move on to the next dress?” Gram looks among the group and everyone nods. The stylist ushers me back into the dressing room and helps me get out of this one and holds out the gray dress Tatyana and I picked out.
Once we’ve got the gray dress situated, the stylist once again leads me out to the platform in front of everyone, I step up and look at myself in the mirror. Oh goodness, this is horrendous.
“Oh my,” Mrs. Michaels comments.
“Oh, well… uhm..” Merrin stutters, trying to find something nice to say. I was right about mermaid style not working with my body and the gray makes it even worse. Gray does not go well with my skin tone.
“I don’t mind it,” Tatyana says and I can see her stifling a laugh. Even the stylist is trying her best not to make a disapproving face.
“Are you wanting a dress that isn’t white?” Merrin finally finishes her sentence. “I’m not a huge fan of the gray but maybe an off-white or a light pink or light purple? Pastel colors maybe? I don’t know.”
“Pastel colors? I think that is a great idea,” my mom comments and I can see her barely holding back further comments. She knows I like pastels but I think she can also tell something is going on with me.
“Yeah, just a lighter color. I mean I guess the gray is pastel, ish. But I think pink or purple or even blue would be better than gray.” Merrin explains and her mom nods.
“Normally I would like to see you in a white dress but whatever you prefer, sweetie.” Mrs. Michaels smiles at me sweetly, encouragingly.
“Well, you should at least try on some of the white dresses too, don’t you think?” Gram asks, hopeful that one of the white dresses will sway me.
Truthfully, I would prefer to wear a white dress for my wedding but seeing as how I won’t actually be wearing any of these dresses because this isn’t a real wedding, I am having fun weighing the pros and cons of wearing a nonwhite dress for this fake wedding.
“We only have one more dress that isn’t white, if you’d like to try that one on next?” The stylist makes the suggestion and then she adds, “To get it out of the way before we move onto the more traditional bridal dresses.”
“Maybe we should,” my mom says and gives me a look that I can tell means she is onto me. I see her glance at Tatyana who quickly puts her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
“It’s not any other color,” I defend the dress. “It’s just an off-white.” Mrs. Michaels nods and Gram waves her hand, smiling. The stylist helps me off the platform and back into the dressing room. She grabs the off-white sparkly number that Tatyana found on the rack.
“You sure you want to try this on? I know I work here but even the lady who bought this dress and returned it said she had made a huge mistake.” The stylist smiles and I laugh a little. I run my fingers down the puffy dress where it hangs inside the dressing room. My fingers come away covered in sparkles. Pink sparkles to be particular. I may have forgotten to mention that even though the dress itself is only slightly off-white, the sparkles are pink. They are pastel pink sparkles but still, pink. Which is perfect for Merrin and my mom’s pastel idea.
“Oh yeah, we need to show them this.” The stylist chuckles then she helps me step into the dress. The dress is a typical ball gown style but it looks more fairy princess rather than a bride. I let out a breath. “Alright, bring me to the village people. I feel like I need a wand to go with this outfit.”
The stylist laughs but quiets herself as she leads me out to the platform once again. I avoid looking at everyone’s faces but I can hear a few murmurs and gasps. I sneak a peek at the corner of the mirror where I can see Tatyana and I see her biting her lip to keep from grinning and probably laughing. I turn to face everyone with a smile on my face.
“So? What does everyone think?” I smile politely at everyone and take a look at their reactions.
“I love it,” Tatyana says and lets the grin take over her face. I shoot her a look then roll my eyes and focus on everyone else.
“I know you like pink and we just talked about the idea of pastels… but you look like a fairy, not a bride,” my mother says, much to my surprise. I try to stifle my laughter because she’s not wrong but I can’t believe she would make that comment in front of Mrs. Michaels. Merrin snorts at the comment and Tatyana lets out a laugh and nods in agreement.
“Shall we move on to the white dresses now?” Mrs. Micheals asks, not saying anything about the dress I am currently wearing. I let out a quiet sigh and let the stylist bring me back to the dressing room.
The stylist helps me into two more white dresses that have the group agreeing unanimously that they were not the ones for me. The next dress has my heart fluttering.
Oh no, I can’t get excited about a dress for a fake wedding.
The dress is a beautiful A-line gown with detailed lace on the bodice and the skirt. The straps match beautifully with the bodice and when the stylist helps me with the dress, it fits perfectly. It hugs all of my curves but not in a bad way. Not in the usual way where I want to get a size up or wear a sweatshirt or sweater to cover myself. This dress makes me look gorgeous.
“Are you ready to show everybody?” The stylist asks, smiling at me.